Are elite universities losing their competitive edge?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kim, E. Han; Morse, Adair; Zingales, Luigi
• 署名单位: National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Chicago; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-405X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2008.09.007
• 发表日期: 2009
• 页码: 353-381
• 关键词: Faculty productivity; firm boundaries; Knowledge-based industries; theory of the firm

摘要

We study the location-specific component of research productivity for economics and finance faculty over the last three decades. We find that there was a positive effect of being affiliated with a top 25 university in the 1970s; this effect weakened in the 1980s and disappeared in the 1990s. The decline in elite university fixed effect is due to the reduced importance of physical access to productive research colleagues, which in turn seems due to innovations in communication technology. One implication is that knowledge-based organizations should find it more difficult to capture rents vis-a-vis workers. We find that faculty salaries increased the most where the estimated spillover dropped the most. Despite the loss in local spillovers, elite universities still enjoy an edge in average productivity because of agglomeration of top researchers in prestigious institutions with high long-term research reputations. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V.