Publish or perish? The increasing importance of publications for prospective economics professors in Austria, Germany and Switzerland

Abstract

Tenure decisions depend, among other factors, on a candidate’s career age and publication record.We associate publications with journal articles indexed in EconLit and measure publication output in equivalents of both top-five journal articles and European Economic Review (EER) articles. We find that the average age of a professor in the year of his/her first appointment is 38, i.e. he or she is appointed approximately eight years after completing the PhD. Between 1970 and 2006, the average publication record at the time of the first appointment is equivalent to 1.5 standardized top-five articles or 2.3 standardized EER articles. Publication records vary across subfields and have become more substantial over time.We predict that someone aspiring to a tenured position after 2011 should aim at an equivalent of four standardized top-five articles or six standardized EER articles.