Job Security and Productivity: Evidence from Academics

How does job security influence productivity? I create a dataset from the bibliographic records of the National Bureau of Economic Research working paper series and from hand collected data from individual curricula vitae to compare productivity of professors before and after tenure. This paper uses a fuzzy regression discontinuity design with fixed effects and finds that the number of papers produced drops immediately after tenure. Also, the pattern in productivity growth changes from increasing every year to having very little change in the years after tenure. Assuming researchers are similar pre-and post-tenure except for the new position, this finding is suggests that tenure causes the decrease in productivity. This gives credibility to the concern that tenured professors stop being productive. * email: william [email protected]. I would like to thank my advisor Enrico Moretti. I would also like to thank David Liu for his Python coding skills. All mistakes are my own.