Fast Track or Failure: a Study of the Completion Rates of Graduate Students in Economics.

This paper presents an analysis of the failure and completion rates of graduate students in economics at three universities in The Netherlands. The students leave the "Ph.D. production process" either because of completion of their thesis or because they quit the program. We find that an indicator of the research productivity of the supervisor is an important determinant of the completion and dropout rates. However, this effect seems due to the fact that supervisors with a good research record attract and select better students. There is no evidence of an independent effect of having a supervisor who is an active researcher.