| By: |
Gonzalez Sauri, Mario (UNU-MERIT);
Rossello, Giulia (UNU-MERIT) |
| Abstract: |
Prestige and mobility are important aspects of academic life that play a
critical role during early-career. After PhD graduation scholars have to
compete for positions in the labour market. Unfortunately, many of them have
few research products such that their inherent ability and skills remain
mostly unobserved for hiring committees. Institutional prestige in this
context is a key mechanism that signals the quality of candidates, and many
studies have shown that a "good" affiliation can confer many opportunities for
future career development. We know little, however, about how changes of
scholar's institutional prestige during early-career relate to future academic
performance. In this paper, we use an algorithm to rank universities based on
hiring networks in Mexico. We distinguish three groups of scholars that move
Up, Down or Stay in the prestige hierarchy between PhD graduation and first
job. After controlling for individual characteristics by matching scholars
with equal training or the same first job institution, we find that scholars
hired by their existing faculty sustain higher performance over their career
in comparison to other groups. Interestingly, we find that scholars that move
up the hierarchy exhibit, on average, lower academic performance than the
other groups. We argue that the negative relation between upward ranking
mobility and performance is related to the difficulties in changing research
teams at an early-career stage and to the so-called "big-fish-small-pond"
effect. We observe a high stratification of universities by prestige and a
negative association between mobility and performance that can hinder the
flows of knowledge throughout the science system. |
| Keywords: |
University Prestige, Academic Performance, Early Career, Mobility, Faculty hiring network, Institutional Stratification, Scholars Research Performance, University System, University Ranking Emerging Countries, Matched Pair Analysis, PhD Job Market, Mexico |
| JEL: |
D70 I20 I23 J62 O30 Z13 |
| Date: |
2019–05–17 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2019018&r=all |