My dissertation focuses on economics of higher education. Specifically, I study how scientists’ social network gives indications on their later career (Chapter 1), the universities’ research performance (Chapter2), and the overall production of research outputs (Chapter3). Building on the current surge of social network analysis, all the papers are built upon networks of co-authors. This thesis contributes to the study of social networks. It documents the prevalence of research collaborations and how they impact the production of science, making a case for taking this phenomenon into account when designing funding mechanisms. Chapter 1 looks at how a researcher’s professional network influences her career path, and I specifically consider the career of young economists on the American academic market. I exploit an original dataset building from the researchers’ individual vitae and their publication records. I investigate the impact of social network on career path by looking at the correlation between early career network metrics and the quality of the institutional affiliation of the researcher. I find that the number of social ties a researcher has as well as her relative position in the research network matters for explaining career mobility and success, even when controlling for publications. Having more co-authors boost the early career, while a higher quality of publications matters on the long run. In Chapter 2, I look at the impact of inter-university partnerships on the production of research outputs.Using an original data set of scientific publications and universities’ budgets, I analyze the network of research in Spain based on the network of Spanish co- authors. I show how the growth in research productivity of Spanish institutions before the crisis was linked to the increase in universities’ budgets and in inter- university collaborations. The results show that the size of the university is the key factor to understand universities productivity. The network multiplier is significant and positive, indicating that collaboration has a positive effect. Finally, in the context of the current crisis, I am able to identify the universities that are the least productive, taking into account their own characteristics and the indirect effects of the collaborations. This analysis has clear policy implications,as the least productive universities could be targeted to minimize the impact of further budgets cuts.Finally, Chapter 3 focuses on the link between the composition of the scientists’ workforce and the amount of research produced. Using Chapter 2’s dataset enriched by a list of the applicants to the two most prestigious postdoctoral grants in Spain, I am able to identify the young researchers in the co-authorship network. I study the link between the number of young researchers and the total research output. All three chapters show how important collaborations are in the production of science. The first chapter shows how some network metrics correlate with career outcomes, giving indication on how much to engage in collaborative work. The second paper shows how network analysis can be used to produce performance rankings of universities taking into account the partnerships. Finally, the third chapter makes a case for the importance of policies targeting young scientists. Further research can be done to understand the link between competition for students and resources and the co-authorship network, or the endogenous process of career changes and changes in the network. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In 1870 a Massachusetts shoe manufacturer imported 75 Chinese workers to break a strike. This event ignited nationwide interest in Chinese immigration and ultimately led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first law ever passed by the United States banning a group of people based solely on race or nationality. The origins of the Chinese Exclusion Act involve many factors, but the most important force behind the law was national politicians who, in an era of almost perfectly-balanced party strength, seized the issue in the quest for votes. Politicians appealed directly to voters' deep-seated racism. They manipulated the image of the Chinese immigrant--who often appeared positively and heroically in popular culture--and transformed it into something grotesque. The politics of racism brought success in the West where most Chinese immigrants had settled, but the campaign fell flat east of the Rocky Mountains. No groundswell of support for exclusion emerged in the East in the mid-1870s. In 1877, however, after the national railroad strike revealed the stark class divisions in American society, politicians shifted their tactics and presented Chinese exclusion as a way to help the workingman. They did this in spite of the fact that eastern workers had expressed virtually no interest in the issue. Workers had long opposed the importation of Chinese laborers but not their immigration. Workers carefully distinguished between the two--a distinction ignored by politicians and historians alike. To politicians, Chinese exclusion became a panacea for rising working-class discontent. By making the Chinese the scapegoat for the nation's industrial problems, politicians could avoid dealing with the genuine causes of the depression; they could also ignore more far-reaching solutions which would have required direct government intervention in the economy. Chinese exclusion served as class politics on the cheap. Such anti-Chinese politics served other functions as well. It helped wean Republicans away from the equal rights ideals of the Civil War and legitimized racism as national policy. A classic example of top-down politics, the Chinese Exclusion Act symbolically marked the end of Reconstruction and set a precedent for later anti-immigration legislation.

This dissertation takes a retrospective look at the first decade of EPA's implementation of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act commonly known as Superfund. Two models are employed that reflect EPA's implementation of Superfund: a rational threats game-theoretic bargaining model and a discrete choice empirical model. The game theoretic hazardous waste bargaining model produces an elegant and simple decision rule. Using this decision rule, EPA compares the expected transaction costs incurred because of litigation against EPA's prospects for a court-ordered award. The agency enters into bargaining when the savings from avoiding litigation is equal to the court-ordered award. EPA and the coalition of responsible parties bargain about how to share site clean-up costs (mixed funding) and when successful, enter into a voluntary settlement. The discrete choice empirical analysis reveals that high transaction costs, lengthy delays in site clean-ups and limited enforcement/litigation characterize EPAs implementation of CERCLA during the decade ending in 1990. Differences in how EPA implements this legislation across EPA Regions is explored. Compared to the other Eastern EPA Regions, EPA Region 4 is less likely to litigate and more likely to use Superfund monies to clean up hazardous waste sites.

Why and under what conditions do governments borrow before elections? This thesis aims to shed light on this question by exploring governments' incentives that give rise to political budget cycles, i.e. fluctuations in the budget balance during election times, under different political, institutional, and economic contexts. The argument will be developed in three stages. First, the thesis will explain why politicians may choose to use debt strategically to win elections and discuss and evaluate different models that can explain political budget cycles. One model, a moral hazard type competence model is, as will be shown, particularly suited for this study. It will be extended in stages two and three. The second stage will look at the benefits and costs from public debt, with a particular emphasis on the likelihood of re-election (government popularity), party system polarisation, and sovereign risk. Sovereign risk increases the cost of borrowing and thus dampens the magnitude of political budget cycles; the effect of government popularity on strategic debt is conditional on the degree of polarisation. The third stage will take the motives to borrow as given and examine the effectiveness of debt as a strategic instrument. The less voters attribute responsibility for fiscal policy to governments, the less effective debt is as a strategic instrument. Economic volatility, regulatory density, and economic openness, this thesis argues, reduce this effectiveness and in turn the political budget cycle. Similarly, coalition government reduces responsibility associated with individual coalition partners, and thus the strategic value of public debt - yet this effect is moderated by the distribution of cabinet portfolios. The argument in this thesis is based both on formal models and on empirical, time series-cross sectional, analyses. It is arguably the most comprehensive treatment of political budget cycles and adds to an increasing literature on the contextual determinants of fiscal policy.

Zugl.: Göttingen, Univ., Diss., 2005. / In: Springer-Online.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 168-179). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Diss. Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2008. / Business and Economics (German Language) (Springer-11775) (GWV).

Diss. Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2008. / Business and Economics (German Language) (Springer-11775) (GWV).

Diss. Universität Chemnitz, 2008. / Business and Economics (German Language) (Springer-11775) (GWV).

Diss. Universität Chemnitz, 2008. / Business and Economics (German Language) (Springer-11775) (GWV).