Mixon and Colleagues Explore Segmentation in Academic Labor Markets

In their new study on labor market segmentation in academe, Turner College economist Frank Mixon and his colleagues João Faria of Florida Atlantic University and William Sawyer of Texas Christian University cite prior research indicating that although the tendency of academic departments to hire from institutions ranked at or above their level is prevalent throughout academe, the top economics departments are more likely to engage in the practice than are top departments in other social sciences (e.g., sociology, political science, psychology), English, history and mathematics.  To explore this labor market segmentation, the study, which appears in the latest issue of Economies, first provides a straightforward formal model based on two working hypotheses.  First, academic departments choose to hire faculty based on pedigree.  Second, job market candidates from top departments have an advantage because their professors dominate the main journals of the area.  This network effect translates into more publications, thus increasing these candidates’ value in the job market.  The formal model generates a three-tiered hierarchy of academic institutions wherein those institutions populating the top two tiers are able to hire faculty with doctorate degrees of equal or higher stature.  The main implication of the formal model is tested using data on the distributions of the educational credentials of assistant professors in economics departments across institutional rankings from both RePEc and U.S. News & World Report.  Their analysis supports the main implication of their formal model in 80% to 95% of the distributions examined.