IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cai/repdal/redp_224_0547.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Piecework versus merit pay: a mean field games approach to academic behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Damien Besancenot
  • Jean-Michel Courtault
  • Khaled El Dika

Abstract

This paper applies the mean field game approach pioneered by Lasry and Lions [2007] to the analysis of researchers? academic productivity. It provides a theoretical motivation for the stability of the universally observed Lotka?s law. It shows that a remuneration scheme taking into account researchers? rank with respect to the academic resume can induce a larger number of researchers to overtake a minimal production standard. It thus appears as superior to piecework remuneration.

Suggested Citation

  • Damien Besancenot & Jean-Michel Courtault & Khaled El Dika, 2012. "Piecework versus merit pay: a mean field games approach to academic behavior," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 122(4), pages 547-563.
    • Handle: RePEc:cai:repdal:redp_224_0547
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=REDP_224_0547
    Download Restriction: free
    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/revue-d-economie-politique-2012-4-page-547.htm
    Download Restriction: free
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Glenn Ellison, 2013. "How Does the Market Use Citation Data? The Hirsch Index in Economics," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 63-90, July.
    2. Jean-Michel Courtault & Eric Rimbaux & Tong Zhu, 2010. "De la réputation scientifique et de sa mesure," Revue française d'économie, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(3), pages 185-230.
    3. repec:adr:anecst:y:2001:i:62:p:03 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Courtault, Jean-Michel & Hayek, Naïla & Rimbaux, Eric & Zhu, Tong, 2010. "Research in economics and management in France: A bibliometric study using the h-index," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 329-337, April.
    5. Chung, Kee H & Cox, Raymond A K, 1990. "Patterns of Productivity in the Finance Literature: A Study of the Bibliometric Distributions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(1), pages 301-309, March.
    6. repec:adr:anecst:y:2001:i:62:p:02 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Khan, M. Ali & Sun, Yeneng, 2002. "Non-cooperative games with many players," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, in: R.J. Aumann & S. Hart (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 46, pages 1761-1808, Elsevier.
    8. Groot, Tom & Garcia-Valderrama, Teresa, 2006. "Research quality and efficiency: An analysis of assessments and management issues in Dutch economics and business research programs," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(9), pages 1362-1376, November.
    9. Louis Lévy-Garboua, 2008. "Rapport sur le premier concours national d'agrégation de l'enseignement supérieur pour le recrutement de Professeurs des Universités en Sciences Economiques (Année 2007-2008)," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 118(5), pages 603-623.
    10. Steve Swidler & Elizabeth Goldreyer, 1998. "The Value of a Finance Journal Publication," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(1), pages 351-363, February.
    11. Combes, Pierre-Philippe & Linnemer, Laurent & Visser, Michael, 2008. "Publish or peer-rich? The role of skills and networks in hiring economics professors," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 423-441, June.
    12. Dubois, Pierre & Rochet, Jean-Charles & Schlenker, Jean-Marc, 2010. "What Does It Take to Become a Good Mathematician?," TSE Working Papers 10-160, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    13. Xavier Gabaix, 2009. "Power Laws in Economics and Finance," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 255-294, May.
    14. Pierre-Philippe Combes & Laurent Linnemer, 2001. "La publication d'articles de recherche en économie en France," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 62, pages 5-47.
    15. Arthur M. Diamond Jr., 1986. "What is a Citation Worth?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 21(2), pages 200-215.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Damien Besancenot & Habib Dogguy, 2015. "Paradigm Shift: A Mean Field Game Approach," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 67(3), pages 289-302, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jean-Yves Lesueur, 2010. "La production scientifique des enseignants-chercheurs en économie : Quelques résultats économétriques issus du dispositif PES," Working Papers 1030, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.
    2. Ma, Chao & Li, Yiwei & Guo, Feng & Si, Kao, 2019. "The citation trap: Papers published at year-end receive systematically fewer citations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 667-687.
    3. David L. Anderson & John Tressler, 2013. "The Relevance of the “h-” and “g-” Index to Economics in the Context of A Nation-Wide Research Evaluation Scheme: The New Zealand Case," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(1), pages 81-94, March.
    4. Damien Besancenot & Kim Huynh & Radu Vranceanu, 2011. "A Matching Model of the Academic Publication Market," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 167(4), pages 708-725, December.
    5. Gérard Charreaux, 2011. "«Cité ou oublié»:les supports de la notoriété des professeurs en sciences de gestion vus à travers Google Scholar," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 14(4), pages 129-166, December.
    6. Clément Bosquet & Pierre-Philippe Combes, 2013. "Are academics who publish more also more cited? Individual determinants of publication and citation records," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 97(3), pages 831-857, December.
    7. Bruno S. Frey & Katja Rost, 2010. "Do rankings reflect research quality?," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 13, pages 1-38, May.
    8. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2018. "Citations in Economics: Measurement, Uses, and Impacts," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(1), pages 115-156, March.
    9. Richard S. J. Tol, 2022. "Rise of the Kniesians: the professor-student network of Nobel laureates in economics," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(4), pages 680-703, July.
    10. Damien Besancenot & Kim Huynh & Francisco Serranito, 2015. "Co-Authorship And Individual Research Productivity In Economics: Assessing The Assortative Matching Hypothesis," CEPN Working Papers halshs-01252373, HAL.
    11. Damien Besancenot & Kim Van Huynh & Francisco Serranito, 2015. " Thou shalt not work alone ," CEPN Working Papers hal-01175758, HAL.
    12. Damien Besancenot & Abdelghani Maddi, 2019. "Should citations be weighted to assess the influence of an academic article?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 435(1), pages 435-445.
    13. Lina M. Cortés & Andrés Mora-Valencia & Javier Perote, 2016. "The productivity of top researchers: a semi-nonparametric approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 891-915, November.
    14. Damien Besancenot & Habib Dogguy, 2011. "Paradigm Shift," Working Papers halshs-00590527, HAL.
    15. Vikas Mittal & Lawrence Feick & Feisal Murshed, 2008. "Publish and Prosper: The Financial Impact of Publishing by Marketing Faculty," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(3), pages 430-442, 05-06.
    16. Michael R Ransom & Michael J. Hilmer & Christiana E. Hilmer, 2022. "Meritocracy in Academic Labor Markets: A Comparison of Three Fields," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(2), pages 465-481, June.
    17. Jean-Yves Lesueur, 2010. "La production scientifique des enseignants-chercheurs en économie : Quelques résultats économétriques issus du dispositif PES," Post-Print halshs-00537859, HAL.
    18. Michael J. Hilmer & Michael R. Ransom & Christiana E. Hilmer, 2015. "Fame and the fortune of academic economists: How the market rewards influential research in economics," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 82(2), pages 430-452, October.
    19. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/7at9bl1f9p83986n6agkmg6nki is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Mareva Sabatier & Christine Musselin & Frédérique Pigeyre, 2015. "Devenir professeur des universités. Une comparaison sur trois disciplines (1976-2007)," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 66(1), pages 37-63.
    21. Powdthavee, Nattavudh & Riyanto, Yohanes E. & Knetsch, Jack L., 2018. "Lower-rated publications do lower academics’ judgments of publication lists: Evidence from a survey experiment of economists," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 33-44.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cai:repdal:redp_224_0547. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cairn.info/revue-d-economie-politique.htm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.