Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/89266
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
LEM Working Paper Series No. 2009/12
Publisher: 
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Pisa
Abstract: 
This paper investigates whether the quality of higher education and, in particular, its research performance stimulate graduates' research-oriented careers. More specifically, exploiting a very rich data-set on university graduates and the higher education institutions they attended, we empirically study whether graduates from universities and programs that display better academic research records are more likely to be enroled in PhDs or employed as researchers three years after graduation. Controlling for a number of individual and university covariates and using different proxies for research performance, we find that the likelihood of entering a research-oriented career increases with the quality of academic research. Notably, the inclusion of university fixed-effects shows that this result does not stem from unobserved university heterogeneity. Our finding is stronger for graduates in science, medicine, and engineering.
Subjects: 
academic research
labor market for scientist
post-graduate education
JEL: 
I23
O30
O38
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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