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