IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/maxpod/141.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The chance of influence: A natural experiment on the role of social capital in academic hiring

Author

Listed:
  • Godechot, Olivier

Abstract

The effect of social capital is often overrated because contacts and centrality can be a consequence of success rather than its cause. Randomized or natural experiments are an excellent way to assess the real causal effect of social capital, but these are rare. This paper relies on data from one such experiment: recruitment at the EHESS, a leading social science institution in France, between 1960 and 2005. The EHESS recruitment process uses an electoral commission to produce a first-stage ranking of applicants, which is then provided to the faculty assembly for final voting. The commission is partly composed of faculty members drawn at random, a feature that this article exploits in order to compare the chances for success of applicants whose contacts have been drawn to sit on the commission (treated) versus those whose contacts have not been drawn (control). It shows that a contact such as a PhD advisor has a causal impact, especially for assistant professor hiring exams: it doubles the chance of being ranked and increases the share of votes by 10 percent. This phenomenon may explain part of the classic "academic inbreeding" issue.

Suggested Citation

  • Godechot, Olivier, 2014. "The chance of influence: A natural experiment on the role of social capital in academic hiring," MaxPo Discussion Paper Series 14/1, Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo).
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:maxpod:141
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/104628/1/809003988.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. David J. Zimmerman, 2003. "Peer Effects in Academic Outcomes: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(1), pages 9-23, February.
    3. Charles F. Manski, 1993. "Identification of Endogenous Social Effects: The Reflection Problem," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 60(3), pages 531-542.
    4. Marmaros, David & Sacerdote, Bruce, 2002. "Peer and social networks in job search," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 870-879, May.
    5. Pierre-Philippe Combes & Laurent Linnemer & Michael Visser, 2008. "Publish or Peer-rich," Post-Print hal-00558189, HAL.
    6. Hugo Horta & Francisco M. Veloso & Rócio Grediaga, 2010. "Navel Gazing: Academic Inbreeding and Scientific Productivity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(3), pages 414-429, March.
    7. Bruce Sacerdote, 2001. "Peer Effects with Random Assignment: Results for Dartmouth Roommates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 116(2), pages 681-704.
    8. Eisenberg, Theodore & Wells, Martin T, 2000. "Inbreeding in Law School Hiring: Assessing the Performance of Faculty Hired from Within," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 369-388, January.
    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. Lutter, Mark & Schröder, Martin, 2016. "Who becomes a tenured professor, and why? Panel data evidence from German sociology, 1980–2013," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(5), pages 999-1013.
    2. Godechot, Olivier & Horton, Joanne & Millo, Yuval, 2019. "Structural exchange pays off: Reciprocity in boards and executive compensations in US firms (1990-2015)," MaxPo Discussion Paper Series 19/1, Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo).
    3. Daniele Checchi & Silvia De Poli & Enrico Rettore, 2017. "Does random selection of commissioners improve the quality of selected candidates? An investigation in the Italian academia," FBK-IRVAPP Working Papers 2017-01, Research Institute for the Evaluation of Public Policies (IRVAPP), Bruno Kessler Foundation.
    4. Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Haddawy, Peter & Cicero, Tindaro & Hassan, Saeed-Ul, 2017. "The solitude of stars. An analysis of the distributed excellence model of European universities," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 435-454.
    5. Zuo, Zhiya & Zhao, Kang & Ni, Chaoqun, 2019. "Standing on the shoulders of giants?—Faculty hiring in information schools," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 341-353.
    6. Bäker, Agnes, 2015. "Non-tenured post-doctoral researchers’ job mobility and research output: An analysis of the role of research discipline, department size, and coauthors," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 634-650.
    7. Lutter, Mark & Schröder, Martin, 2014. "Who becomes a tenured professor, and why? Panel data evidence from German sociology, 1980-2013," MPIfG Discussion Paper 14/19, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.

    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. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/37ufknmfv39tppkbjb4dmidnqe is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Olivier Godechot, 2016. "The Chance of Influence: A Natural Experiment on the Role of Social Capital in Faculty Recruitment," Sciences Po publications info:hdl:2441/37ufknmfv39, Sciences Po.
    3. Kang, Changhui, 2007. "Classroom peer effects and academic achievement: Quasi-randomization evidence from South Korea," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 458-495, May.
    4. Jones, Todd R. & Kofoed, Michael S., 2020. "Do peers influence occupational preferences? Evidence from randomly-assigned peer groups at West Point," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    5. Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Haddawy, Peter & Cicero, Tindaro & Hassan, Saeed-Ul, 2017. "The solitude of stars. An analysis of the distributed excellence model of European universities," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 435-454.
    6. Patrick Bayer & Stephen L. Ross & Giorgio Topa, 2008. "Place of Work and Place of Residence: Informal Hiring Networks and Labor Market Outcomes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(6), pages 1150-1196, December.
    7. Ryan Yeung & Phuong Nguyen-Hoang, 2016. "Endogenous peer effects: Fact or fiction?," The Journal of Educational Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 109(1), pages 37-49, January.
    8. Changhui Kang, 2007. "Academic interactions among classroom peers: a cross-country comparison using TIMSS," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(12), pages 1531-1544.
    9. Lépine, Andrea & Estevan, Fernanda, 2021. "Do ability peer effects matter for academic and labor market outcomes?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    10. Clifton-Sprigg, Joanna, 2014. "Educational spillovers and parental migration," 2007 Annual Meeting, July 29-August 1, 2007, Portland, Oregon TN 2015-46, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    11. Patrick Bayer & Stephen L. Ross, 2006. "Identifying Individual and Group Effects in the Presence of Sorting: A Neighborhood Effects Application," Working papers 2006-13, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Jan 2009.
    12. Yakusheva, Olga & Kapinos, Kandice & Weiss, Marianne, 2011. "Peer effects and the Freshman 15: Evidence from a natural experiment," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 119-132, March.
    13. Guccio, C. & Lisi, D., 2014. "Social interactions in inappropriate behavior for childbirth services: Theory and evidence from the Italian hospital sector," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 14/28, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    14. Xu Lin, 2010. "Identifying Peer Effects in Student Academic Achievement by Spatial Autoregressive Models with Group Unobservables," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(4), pages 825-860, October.
    15. Adriaan R Soetevent & Peter Kooreman, 2005. "Social Ties within School Classes: The Roles of Gender, Ethnicity, and Having Older Siblings," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(3), pages 373-391, Autumn.
    16. Victor Lavy & Analia Schlosser, 2011. "Mechanisms and Impacts of Gender Peer Effects at School," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 1-33, April.
    17. Yann Algan & Quoc-Anh Do & Nicolò Dalvit & Alexis Le Chapelain & Yves Zenou, 2015. "How Social Networks Shape Our Beliefs: A Natural Experiment among Future French Politicians," Working Papers hal-03459820, HAL.
    18. Bäker, Agnes, 2015. "Non-tenured post-doctoral researchers’ job mobility and research output: An analysis of the role of research discipline, department size, and coauthors," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 634-650.
    19. Silvia Mendolia & Alfredo R Paloyo & Ian Walker, 2018. "Heterogeneous effects of high school peers on educational outcomes," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 70(3), pages 613-634.
    20. Chih‐Sheng Hsieh & Lung‐Fei Lee & Vincent Boucher, 2020. "Specification and estimation of network formation and network interaction models with the exponential probability distribution," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(4), pages 1349-1390, November.
    21. Francesca Gioia, 2017. "Peer effects on risk behaviour: the importance of group identity," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(1), pages 100-129, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:zbw:maxpod:141. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/maxpofr.html .

    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.