Publish or.....Publish More

Here's a very insightful article about the shape of the production function in big-time academics.

Comments

[Guan Yang]

So... do you write all your own papers?

;-)

[gborjas]

Yes! Plus I run all my own regressions. I personally find it very difficult to keep track of what research assistants do. I've learned that if I want to disseminate research findings that I can be confident of and that I know precisely where they came from, the easiest way to ensure that is to do it myself.

[HaL]

Some professors will expect you to give up evenings, weekends, etc. with minimal pay and minimal recognition for their projects. But hey, they don't know what type of regression to use or how to use a statistical program and they don't have time to do it so that's where you come in: to help produce their 50 journal articles a year.

[HaL]

Not that I'm against research assistant positions...just those where you're never listed as an author despite significant contributions...

[biscotti]

My conjecture is that the ghostwriting stuff is more likely to be seen in fields that appreciate published books more than journal articles.

When you present a 30-page economic paper, You have to know every detail (or at least most of them) in case of being questioned or beaten to death before even submitting it to a journal. When you talk about a 300-page book, it is less likely to happen. Furthermore, it is a lot easier for the peer reviewers to read a 30-page paper than a 300-page book.