Zinovyeva, Natalia and Bagues, Manuel
https://www.aeaweb.org/aej-applied/accepted_single.php?id=1649&jrnl=app
https://www.aeaweb.org/aej-applied/accepted_single.php?id=1649&jrnl=app
This is a forthcoming paper (AEJ: applied economics). This paper analyzes how one’s connections affect his academic promotion and academic success. The authors use evidence from centralized selection exams in Spain, where evaluators are randomly assigned to promotion committees, and find that the channel would be both evaluators’ private information and subjective biases if he’s an acquaintance of the candidate.
It turns out that connection in committee has a significantly positive influence in promotion (from assistant to associate professor and from associate to full professor). However, in terms of selection efficiency, it depends on type of connections. For those evaluated by strong tied acquaintances like the Ph.D. advisor, a colleague or a co-author, evaluation biases dominate the information advantages and the following academic performance would be worse. Weaker links like presence in thesis committee, on the other hand, may improve the efficiency of selection process because the candidates have better achievements in the following years (such as more publications and citations).
It turns out that connection in committee has a significantly positive influence in promotion (from assistant to associate professor and from associate to full professor). However, in terms of selection efficiency, it depends on type of connections. For those evaluated by strong tied acquaintances like the Ph.D. advisor, a colleague or a co-author, evaluation biases dominate the information advantages and the following academic performance would be worse. Weaker links like presence in thesis committee, on the other hand, may improve the efficiency of selection process because the candidates have better achievements in the following years (such as more publications and citations).