Peer Effects in Science - Evidence from the Dismissal of Scientists in Nazi Germany

Fabian Waldinger

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: This paper analyzes peer effects among university scientists. Specifically, it investigates whether thenumber of peers and their average quality affects the productivity of researchers in physics, chemistry,and mathematics. The usual endogeneity problems related to estimating peer effects are addressed byusing the dismissal of scientists by the Nazi government as a source of exogenous variation in the peergroup of scientists staying in Germany. Using a newly constructed panel dataset covering the universeof physicists, chemists, and mathematicians at all German universities from 1925 until 1938 Iinvestigate peer effects at the local level and among co-authors. There is no evidence for localizedpeer effects, as neither department level (e.g. the physics department) nor specialization level (e.g. alltheoretical physicists in the department) peers affect a researcher's productivity. Among co-authors,however, there is strong and significant evidence that peer quality affects a researcher's productivity.Loosing a co-author of average quality reduces the productivity of an average scientist by about 13percent in physics and 16.5 percent in chemistry.

Keywords: peer effects; Nazi Germany; science; university; higher education; spillovers; co-authors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I21 I23 I28 J24 L31 L38 N34 N44 O31 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-sog
Date: 2009-02
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