| By: |
De Fraja, Gianni;
Facchini, Giovanni;
Gathergood, John |
| Abstract: |
We study the relationship between academic salaries and research performance.
To this end, we use individual level data on the salary of all UK university
professors, matched to results on the performance of academic departments from
the 2014 government evaluation of research. The UK higher education sector is
particularly interesting because professorial salaries are unregulated and the
outcome of the official research evaluation of universities is one of their
key financial and academic concerns. We first present a simple model of
university pay determination, which shows that pay level and pay inequality in
a department are positively related to performance. Our empirical results
confirm these theoretical predictions; we also find that the pay-performance
relationship is weaker for the more established and better paying
universities. Our findings are also consistent with the idea that higher
salaries have been used by departments to recruit academics more likely to
improve their performance. |
| Keywords: |
Higher education competition; Research Excellence Framework; Research funding; Salary inequality; University sector |
| JEL: |
D47 H42 I28 L30 |
| Date: |
2016–11 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11638&r=sog |