Compétition académique et modes de production scientifique des économistes français

This paper studies the determinants of scientific productivity from an original database of French academic economists observed in 2009 and 2010. All these individuals were involved in the first and second experiences of an academic competition, the ?Prime excellence Scientifique?. This tournament was introduced by the French academic system to select best publishers. For this competition, the scientific productivity was observed in a same period from 2005 to 2010 and competitors are selected and ranked by their relative performance in publications using the same criteria (National Scientific Research Center ranking). We construct a scientific production index and estimate productivity regressions using quantile regression. We control for individual characteristics, environmental context, initial publication performance (h index), in line with stylized facts and theoretical foundations like Lotka law and scientific life cycle productivity. The paper brings two novel dimensions in the literature. The first is done by controlling for the multi-task activities of tenure and associated professor when evaluating their scientific production. The second outcome of the paper consists to evaluate the impact of network spillover externalities induced by local competences accumulated in economics departments on each individual performance.