An Econometric Study of the publications of French Physicists (original) (raw)

In the economics of science framework, many empirical studies have e xhibited the persistence of the productivity hierarchies over the life cycle for a cohort of academic scientists. In this paper, we identify rewards in science which may contribute to this persistence and assess their impact on researcher's productivity relative to the influence of individual observed variables (age, gender and education). We have built an unique panel database that concerns French physicists over 1980-1997 and estimate an econometric model that controls for individual unobserved variables and allows time- stable variables. It is an issue for science policy, since the two effects - that of the rewards variables and that of the individual observed variables- are c ontrolled with d ifferent tools The first effect depends on the incentive scheme at work in the scientific institution, and the second effect depends on the recruitment policy in academic research. We consider three measures of produc...