Like father(s), like son(s): Does the Relation between Advisor and Student Productivity Persist on Group Level?

In light of the trend towards the Anglo-Saxon model of structured PhD education we analyze whether the positive relation between supervisor research productivity and young researcher productivity does persist in research groups where several PhD and postdoctoral students are supervised by a team of cooperating senior researchers. Our empirical analysis is based on a data set of 86 research training groups from different disciplinary fields funded by the German Research Foundation. We find that the positive relation between supervisor and student productivity also holds on group level. Controlling for group composition with respect to students’ study background and demographics (age, gender and cultural background), we find evidence for age and gender diversity effects. Our results prove to be robust to a whole set of additional control variables such as group size, disciplinary field and advisor-student ratio.