Do Large Departments Make Academics More Productive? Agglomeration and Peer Effects in Research

Clement Bosquet and Pierre-Philippe Combes

SERC Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: We study the effect of a large set of department characteristics on individual publication records. We control for many individual time-varying characteristics, individual fixed-effects and reverse causality. Department characteristics have an explanatory power that can be as high as that of individual characteristics. The departments that generate most externalities are those where academics are homogeneous in terms of publication performance and have diverse research fields, and, to a lesser extent, large departments, with more women, older academics, star academics and foreign co-authors. Department specialisation in a field also favours publication in that field. More students per academic does not penalise publication. At the individual level, women and older academics publish less, while the average publication quality increases with average number of authors per paper, individual field diversity, number of published papers and foreign co-authors.

Keywords: productivity determinants; economic geography; networks; economics of science; selection and endogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I3 J24 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-hrm, nep-net and nep-sog
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

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http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/sercdp0133.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Sorting and agglomeration economies in French economics departments (2017)
Working Paper: Do large departments make academics more productive? Sorting and agglomeration economies in research (2015)
Working Paper: Do Large Departments Make Academics More Productive? Agglomeration and Peer Effects in Research (2013)
Working Paper: Do large departments make academics more productive? Agglomeration and peer effects in research (2013)
Working Paper: Do large departments make academics more productive? agglomeration and peer effects in research (2013)
Working Paper: Do large departments make academics more productive? Agglomeration and peer effects in research (2013)
Working Paper: Do Large Departments Make Academics More Productive? Agglomeration and Peer Effects in Research (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:sercdp:0133

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