IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ecpoli/v37y2022i112p697-748..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effectiveness of promotion incentives for public employees: evidence from Italian academia

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Nieddu
  • Lorenzo Pandolfi

Abstract

We investigate how promotion incentives affect the productivity of a large sample of high-skilled public employees: academics. In a fuzzy regression-discontinuity design, we exploit the three bibliometric thresholds of the 2012 National Scientific Qualification (NSQ), the centralized evaluation procedure regulating career advancements in Italian universities. We compare the 2013–16 research productivity of assistant professors barely qualified for associate professor—whose next goal becomes meeting the higher thresholds for the full professor qualification—with the productivity of candidates who barely miss the qualification—whose goal remains meeting the associate professor thresholds. We find that barely qualified scholars publish significantly more papers than their non-qualified colleagues, in journals of comparable quality. Our results emphasize the importance of promotion incentives as an effective incentivizing tool in public universities and more in general public organizations.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Nieddu & Lorenzo Pandolfi, 2022. "The effectiveness of promotion incentives for public employees: evidence from Italian academia," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 37(112), pages 697-748.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ecpoli:v:37:y:2022:i:112:p:697-748.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/epolic/eiac017
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Erika Deserranno & Philipp Kastrau & Gianmarco León-Ciliotta, 2021. "Promotions and Productivity: The Role of Meritocracy and Pay Progression in the Public Sector," Working Papers 1239, Barcelona School of Economics.
    2. Maria De Paola & Roberto Nisticò & Vincenzo Scoppa, 2021. "Academic Careers And Fertility Decisions," Working Papers 202101, Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF.
    3. Filandri, Marianna & Pasqua, Silvia, 2019. "Gender discrimination in academic careers in Italy," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201921, University of Turin.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    I23; J45; M51; O31;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • M51 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ecpoli:v:37:y:2022:i:112:p:697-748.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cebruuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.