Resumen de Fame and the fortune of academic economists: How the market rewards influential research in economics

Michael J. Hilmer, Michael R. Ransom(*), Christiana E. Hilmer

• We analyze the pay and position of 1009 faculty members who teach in doctoral-granting economics departments at 53 large public universities in the United States. Using the Web of Science, we have identified the journal articles published by these scholars and the number of times each of these articles has been subsequently cited in published research articles. We find that research influence, as measured by various measures of total citations, is a remarkably strong predictor of the salary and the prestige of the department in which professors are employed. We also examine the effect of coauthorship. Surprisingly, we find no salary penalty for sharing authorship; however, in terms of prestige of employing department, coauthorship is fully discounted.