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

摘要

Tenure decisions depend, among other factors, on a candidate�s career\udage and publication record. We measure publications in units of both\udTop 5 journals and of the European Economic Review (EER), associating\udpublication output with journals indexed in EconLit. We find that the\udaverage age of a professor in the year of his/her first appointment is 38,\udi.e. approximately 8 years after completing the PhD. Between 1970 and\ud2006, the average publication record at the time of the first appointment is\udequivalent to 1.5 standardized Top 5 articles (one co-author, 20 pages) or\ud2.3 standardized EER articles. Publication records vary across sub fields\udand improve over time. We predict that someone running for a tenured\udjob after 2011 should (average of all fields) aim at an average equivalent\udof 4 standardized Top 5 articles or 6 standardized EER articles.