IRES Lunch Seminar - Chiara Zanardello, UCLouvain

March 01, 2022

12:45 - 14:00

Louvain-la-Neuve

Doyen 22, Place des doyens 1

Chiara Zanardello

IRES/LIDAM, UCLouvain

will give a presentation on

Market forces in Italian Academia today (and yesterday)

Abstract:

This paper investigates the operation of the academic market in Italy, mapping current scholars’ location choices. I build a new dataset of current professors, associating each scholar with a composite indicator of their quality. The analysis includes the quality of the university and the features of the city where the institution is located. I estimate the strength of different factors: gravity (distance), agglomeration (scholars are attracted to higher quality universities), selection (better scholars travel longer distances), and sorting (the better the scholar, the more the quality of universities is weighted). I find that all of these factors have an effect, and do not vary according to scholars’ gender. I find a greater expected utility for scholars in choosing private universities over public ones, through a consistent nesting procedure. Comparing these forces to historical trends in Italian academia, the sorting effect delineates a new momentum for the current academic market in Italy.

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