مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

Empirical evidence shows not only that talented researchers are internationally mobile, but also that this mobility is asymmetrically directed towards prestigious U.S. universities (Hunter et al., 2009; Laudel, 2005; Tritah, 2009; Docquier and Rapoport, 2009). This hints at problems in scientific knowledge production, as asymmetric mobility implies that the prevailing conditions for research are limiting the potential of researchers in many countries and hence the progress of science overall. Especially for Europe, which is struggling to keep up with its transatlantic counterpart in terms of scientific knowledge creation (Dosi et al., 2006; Albarrán et al., 2010), this “exodus of European researchers” (Docquier and Rapoport, 2012) is problematic since science-based innovation becomes more important for firms in countries close to the technological frontier (Aghion and Howitt, 2006; Narin et al., 1997)

But despite these stylised facts at the aggregate level, research on the academic labour market and the main drivers that make ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: juergen.janger@wifo.ac.at (J. Janger), klaus.nowotny@sbg.ac.at (K. Nowotny). researchers choose one academic job over another at the individual level, contributing to these asymmetric flows, has so far been dispersed and limited to selective aspects of job choice such as the role of research funding and the quality of peers.

This paper contributes to the literature by analysing the characteristics that determine how researchers choose between different jobs within academia in a systematic and comprehensive way. Building on an extended human capital model for science we unify a dispersed literature relevant for job choice in academia and formulate hypotheses as to which job factors matter for researchers to satisfy both intrinsic and extrinsic motives, taking account of potential non-linearities. To test these hypotheses, we construct hypothetical job offers in academia that are then used in a unique stated choice quasi-experiment embedded in a large-scale international survey of more than 10,000 researchers in all fields of science and at various career stages. Empirically, we not only assess the importance of a comprehensive range of various factors for job choice, but also analyse the trade-offs between different job characteristics and attach monetary values to non-monetary job characteristics in order to assess their relative importance across different groups of researchers and organisational settings.