Does Co-Authorship Lead to Higher Academic Productivity?

Abstract:     
In recent decades, co-authorship and policies aimed at inducing academic collaboration have increased simultaneously. Assuming that intellectual collaboration is exogenously determined, prior studies find a negative relationship between co-authorship and productivity. I examine a panel data on economists publishing from 1970 to 1999 to test the causal effect of intellectual collaboration on intellectual output. As characteristics of the individual and her opportunity set are endogenously related to both collaboration and productivity, I instrument the amount of co-authorship by the common research interest between an author and her potential coauthors. After controlling for endogenous co-authorship formation, unobservable heterogeneity and time varying factors, the effect of intellectual collaboration on individual performance becomes positive. However, this effect varies significantly between high and low productive authors. These findings justify the existence of policies that stimulate intellectual collaboration.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 38

Keywords: co-authorship formation, academic productivity, scientific networks

JEL Classification: A11, J44, O30

working papers series