 Does Tenure Make Researchers Less Productive? The Case of the “Specialist”Joao Ricardo Faria and
Peter McAdam ()
No 514, School of Economics Discussion Papers from School of Economics, University of Surrey Abstract: Many studies suggest that research productivity falls after tenure is granted. We have however limited choice-theoretic understanding of why this should occur. With some simplifying assumptions, we rationalize this as follows. Scholars are assumed to be “specialists”: their research productivity consists in transforming Ph.D. chapters into publishable papers. We show how a department that hired such a scholar provides incentives to maximize research productivity. We show his research productivity and publication paths are then characterized by a “bang-bang” solution, i.e., either he works with maximum or minimum effort. The department sets the scholar’s wages proportional to the department’s impatience to spur his productivity, and only succeeds if he turns out to be more impatient than the department. The paper provides a novel perspective on academic productivity and the tenure system. JEL-codes: A29 D29 M51 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sur:surrec:0514 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in School of Economics Discussion Papers from School of Economics, University of Surrey Contact information at EDIRC. |
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