Explicit Incentives, Implicit Incentives, and Performance: Evidence from Academic Tenure

45 Pages Posted: 18 Mar 2005 Last revised: 20 Feb 2015

See all articles by Si Li

Si Li

Wilfrid Laurier University - School of Business & Economics

Hui Ou-Yang

Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business

Date Written: October 28, 2010

Abstract

This paper tests agency theory on explicit and implicit incentives using a special sample. Specifically, we investigate the productivity (total number of papers) and impact (citations of papers) of the economics and finance faculty from top twenty-five schools and find that these academics’ impact remains consistent before and after tenure. Because impact is arguably a better measure of academics’ performance, our results cannot conclude that these academics slacked off after tenure. We argue that our results are consistent with the notion that if agents have sufficient implicit incentives, they may still exert costly effort even in the absence of explicit contracts.

Keywords: Explicit incentives, implicit incentives, academic tenure, faculty productivity

JEL Classification: J41, J44, I21, M5, D86, C25

Suggested Citation

Li, Si and Ou-Yang, Hui, Explicit Incentives, Implicit Incentives, and Performance: Evidence from Academic Tenure (October 28, 2010). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=399240 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.399240

Si Li

Wilfrid Laurier University - School of Business & Economics ( email )

Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5
Canada

Hui Ou-Yang (Contact Author)

Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business ( email )

Hong Kong
China
852-5199-6227 (Phone)

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