Modeling the Earnings and Research Productivity of Academic Economists

Our model of the earnings process contains (1) a job-quality equation which describes the type of academic job one obtains; (2) a research-output equation; and (3) an earnings equation, in which research output and job quality enter causally. Underlying this model of the earnings process is, of course, a more fundamental set of relationships that is, a set of demand, supply, and production functions which reflect utility maximization on the part of market participants. The model we develop is an intermediatelevel model, more refined than a single-equation approach but not as complete as one based on demand, supply, and production considerations and not as complete as we would like.1 A more complete model would also have separate production functions for teaching, public service, and departmental administrative outputs. The model presented here permits testing several hypotheses. In the job-quality equation (1), the quality of institutional affiliation of a particular economist that is, his or her "job quality" is hypothesized to be determined primarily by (a) the individual's characteristics, such as intelli-

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