So You Want to Hire a Future Star? Student-Advisor Matching and Early Career Productivity for Economics Ph.D.S

Abstract

This paper examines a unique data set containing information on a Ph.D. recipient's dissertation advisor, graduate program, and early career research productivity. We ask whether the match between an economics Ph.D. student and his or her dissertation advisor provides additional information as to the student's likelihood for early career success beyond the program from which the student graduated. Comparing the distributions of research productivity across reputation ranks suggests that substantial overlap exists, with top students from lower ranked programs outperforming a significant percentage of students from top ranked programs. It is further observed that the high performing students from less respected programs tend to work with advisors ranked higher among Coupe's (2003) top 1000 global economists than the less productive students from elite programs. Regressions that control for both program reputation and advisor rank confirm that, all else equal, students working with ranked advisors are significantly more likely to publish in their early careers, especially in top 5 and top 36 journals, than students working with unranked advisors. Moreover, adding controls for advisor rank diminishes the estimated impact of the student's Ph.D. program. Together these facts suggest that the student-advisor match provides an important signal of the student's likelihood for early career publishing success.

Keywords: Research productivity, academic labor markets