Four Essays on University Economics - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

Economic research in Switzerland
six universities, output differences do not translate into differences in research productivity.
In order to compute research productivity which is, arguably, the most important indicator
for managerial decisions, a measure of input in research production is needed. A natural
measure would be costs. Unfortunately, Swiss universities are still not in a position to
provide full cost accounting information. Lacking this kind of information, a second best
alternative that is often used is to compute average productivity in terms of employed
manpower. Even though this approach is, in principle, practicable, some serious problems
arise nonetheless. The first one is that the often-used method of measuring the size of an
economics department with the number of full professors is inadequate since the relevant
research output is not only produced by full professors. As a matter of fact, it appears
that the observed increase in research output is, to a substantial extent, due to the fact
that junior researchers have become much more productive in the observation period. To
establish the number of all researchers who worked in the six departments for the 15 years
covered in our survey is, however, beyond the grasp of this exploratory study. A further
problem that would have to be dealt with in a serious investigation of research productivity
is the fact that researchers specializing in fields other than economics (mathematicians,
political scientists, psychologists, sociologists, etc.) also contribute to economic research.
To identify these researchers and to measure the time they use for economic research is a
real challenge. We do not want to disregard all these issues by using some readily available
but rather meaningless figures. Therefore, we leave this issue to be resolved by a future
investigation that would have to draw on the support of the assessed institutions. 17
1.4 Journal Proliferation and the Development of Research
quality
1.4.1 Journal Proliferation
The increase in economic research activity in Switzerland as described in section 1.3 may,
to some extent at least, be attributed to the fact that during the observation period the
publication behavior was subject to a substitution process favoring journal publications
17 Most scientometric studies dealing with research activity restrict themselves, presumably for the reasons
given above, to measuring output. A notable exception is again the study by Combes and Linnemer
(2003). Their input measure appears, however, to be somewhat suspect (see Ursprung, 2003, p. 185).
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