Posts by Collection

publications

Market Forces in Italian Academia today (and yesterday)

Published in Scientometrics, 2022

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.

Recommended citation: Zanardello, C. Market forces in Italian academia today (and yesterday). Scientometrics 128, 651–698 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04579-0

talks

teaching