nep-sog New Economics Papers
on Sociology of Economics
Issue of 2009‒11‒27
three papers chosen by
Jonas Holmström
Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration

  1. Markets for Reputation: Evidence on Quality and Quantity in Academe By Daniel S. Hamermesh; Gerard A. Pfann
  2. College cost and time to complete a degree: Evidence from tuition discontinuities By Francesco Giavazzi; Pietro Garibaldi; Andrea Ichino; Enrico Rettore
  3. Interconnection among Academic Journal Websites: Multilateral versus Bilateral Interconnection By Jeon, Doh-Shin; Menicucci, Dominico

  1. By: Daniel S. Hamermesh; Gerard A. Pfann
    Abstract: We develop a theory of the market for individual reputation, an indicator of regard by one’s peers and others. The central questions are: 1) Does the quantity of exposures raise reputation independent of their quality? and 2) Assuming that overall quality matters for reputation, does the quality of an individual’s most important exposure have an extra effect on reputation? Using evidence for academic economists, we find that, conditional on its impact, the quantity of output has no or even a negative effect on each of a number of proxies for reputation, and very little evidence that a scholar’s most influential work provides any extra enhancement of reputation. Quality ranking matters more than absolute quality. Data on mobility and salaries show, on the contrary, substantial positive effects of quantity, independent of quality. We test various explanations for the differences between the determinants of reputation and salary.
    JEL: D83 J31 J44
    Date: 2009–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15527&r=sog
  2. By: Francesco Giavazzi; Pietro Garibaldi; Andrea Ichino; Enrico Rettore
    Abstract: University tuition typically remains constant throughout years of enrollment while delayed degree completion is an increasing problem for many academic institutions around the world. Theory suggests that if continuation tuition were raised the probability of late graduation would be reduced. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design on data from Bocconi University in Italy, we show that an increase of 1,000 euro in continuation tuition reduces the probability of late graduation by 9.9 percentage points with respect to a benchmark average probability of 80%. We conclude suggesting that an upward sloping tuition profile would be desirable when effort is sub-optimally supplied, for instance in the presence of public subsidies to education, congestion externalities and/or peer effects.
    Date: 2009
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:igi:igierp:354&r=sog
  3. By: Jeon, Doh-Shin; Menicucci, Dominico
    Abstract: Electronic academic journal websites provide new services of text and/or data mining and linking, indispensable for efficient allocation of attention among abundant sources of scienti…c information. Fully realizing the benefi…t of these services requires interconnection among websites. Motivated by CrossRef, a multilateral citation linking backbone, this paper performs a comparison between multilateral interconnection through an open platform and bilateral interconnection, and finds that publishers are fully interconnected in the former regime while they can be partially interconnected in the latter regime for exclusion or differentiation motives. Surprisingly, if partial interconnection arises for differentiation motive, exclusion of small publisher(s) occurs more often under multilateral interconnection. We also find that in the case of multilateral interconnection, a for-pro…fit platform induces less exclusion than an open platform. Various other extensions are analyzed.
    JEL: D4 K21 L41 L82
    Date: 2009–10–30
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ide:wpaper:21451&r=sog

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