Economics of Education Review 14 1999 65–77
Graduate training and the early career productivity of Ph.D. economists
Thomas C. Buchmueller
a,
, Jeff Dominitz
b
, W. Lee Hansen
c
a
Graduate School of Management, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-3125, USA
b
Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
c
Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706-1393, USA Received 10 September 1996; accepted 30 October 1997
Abstract
This paper estimates the relationships among the attributes of graduate economics programs and the occupational choices and publishing proficiency of recent Ph.D.s. The estimates indicate that research experience in graduate school
e.g. working as a research assistant, submitting and publishing articles is positively associated with subsequent pub- lishing proficiency. Other variables included in the analysis include graduate school ranking, graduate school faculty
size and its publishing proficiency, and individual demographic characteristics and academic experiences.
1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: A23; J44; I21
1. Introduction
In 1988, the American Economic Association formed the Commission on Graduate Education in Economics
COGEE to “take stock of what is being done” in gradu- ate education Krueger et al., 1991. To aid in this effort,
COGEE developed a series of surveys of various seg- ments of the population of practicing and aspiring econ-
omists — faculty members, recent Ph.D.s, current gradu- ate and undergraduate students, and of the organizations
employing them — academic economics departments and non-academic employers. With the aid of survey
results and a series of special studies, COGEE issued reports of its findings and recommendations Hansen,
1990, 1991; Krueger et al., 1991. These reports indicate that, although the formal training of graduate students
seems quite similar across the range of Ph.D. programs, there appear to be substantial differences among students
in the extent to which they believe their formal training
Corresponding author.
0272-775798 - see front matter
1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 2 7 2 - 7 7 5 7 9 8 0 0 0 1 9 - 3
develops research skills, when and how they first become involved in research activities, and how quickly they
complete their dissertations. We continue this effort to assess the state of graduate
education in economics. Prior work has focused on sub- jective
assessments contained in survey responses, infor- mal comparisons of standards and practices across gradu-
ate programs, and comparisons of trends in enrollment and earnings across disciplines. We attempt to obtain an
objective assessment of the educational process by esti-
mating the relationship between graduate training and the publishing proficiency of recent Ph.D. recipients.
COGEE surveys of two cohorts of Ph.D. recipients and publication records constructed from the Journal of
Economic Literature
supply the bulk of the data. Two principal findings emerge from our empirical
analysis. First, initial job placement has a major impact on subsequent publications; economists in faculty pos-
itions at research universities have substantially higher rates of publications than those in other academic and
non-academic positions. Second, our results show that early research exposure during graduate study is associa-
ted with placement in research-oriented academic pos-
66 T.C. Buchmueller et al. Economics of Education Review 14 1999 65–77
itions and, conditional on job placement, with a higher rate of publication.
2. Background and previous literature
