Sorting and Staying: Economics PhDs and Their Hiring and Separation from More Teaching-Oriented Universities

Seth Gitter (sgitter@towson.edu) and Robert Gitter (rjgitter@owu.edu)
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Seth Gitter: Department of Economics, Towson University
Robert Gitter: Department of Economics and Business, Ohio Wesleyan University

No 2024-05, Working Papers from Towson University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Hiring a new economics faculty member is a time-consuming and arduous process, especially for smaller, teaching-oriented programs with limited faculty and budgetary resources. Access to information on graduate programs and candidates that are more likely to yield successful hires allows these programs to allocate scarce resources more efficiently. A dataset of over 650 economics PhD placements at non-economics PhD-granting institutions partially fills this information gap. Results show that new assistant professors in teaching-oriented economics departments tend to be hired from economics PhD-granting institutions with a mean U.S. News and World Report ranking of around 45. In addition, results indicate a positive relationship between the rank of the hiring department and the PhD-granting program. Top-ranked graduate programs in economics send a smaller proportion of their graduates to teaching-oriented institutions, and the average rank of new PhD hires has declined over time. Hires from top PhD- granting programs are more likely to stay at liberal arts colleges and less likely to stay at national universities relative to peers hired at lower-ranked PhD programs.

Keywords: Market for Economists; PhD placements; Small Liberal Arts Schools; and Professor Retention. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2024-05, Revised 2024-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-inv, nep-pke and nep-sog
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