On Publication, Refereeing and Working Hard

We present a model for academia with heterogeneous author types and endogenous effort to explain changes in the publication process in Economics. We analyze the implications of these developments on research output. Lowering the precision of refereeing signals has a negative impact on able authors but invites more submissions from less able authors. Increasing the number of journals stimulates less able authors to submit their papers. The editor can improve the journal's pool of submitted manuscripts by improving the precision of refereeing, but not by lowering quality standards. The submission strategy of an author is informative of his ability.