Let the Sunshine in: An Analysis of the Placement and Pay of University Presidents and the Effects of Open Records Statutes

Larry D. Singell, Mark Stater () and Hui-Hsuan Tang
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Larry D. Singell: Indiana University – Bloomington
Mark Stater: Trinity College
Hui-Hsuan Tang: National Taipei University

Journal of Labor Research, 2018, vol. 39, issue 4, No 3, 405-432

Abstract: Abstract This paper examines how personal, institutional, and legal factors affect where college presidents are placed and how much they earn given their placements. We find that controlling for selection into institutional type is important, suggesting that presidents nonrandomly sort into institutions based on unobserved characteristics that also relate to wages. We also find evidence that state “sunshine” laws governing whether applicants’ names must be disclosed in searches are related to placements and wages. Presidents hired in states that exempt the names of all but finalists from disclosure are more likely to be placed in public research universities and less likely to be placed in private institutions. There is also evidence that presidents hired in open records states earn compensating differentials, but we are ultimately unable to distinguish this from a state-specific effect. We also find wage discounts for presidents hired at times with larger numbers of states with open records and with exemptions to disclosure for non-finalists. Thus, presidents and institutions appear to respond to market-wide incentives created by sunshine laws.

Keywords: College presidents; Wage regressions; Human capital; Sunshine laws; Multinomial logit models; Selection bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I23 I28 J31 J44 K19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s12122-018-9274-y

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