Using a new panel dataset comprising publication and appointment data for 889 German academic economists over a quarter of a century, we confirm the familiar hypothesis that publications are important for professorial appointments, but find only a small negative effect of appointments on...

Post-docs signal their ability to do science and teaching to get a tenure giving universities the possibility of separating highly talented agents from the low talented ones. However separating that means signalling effort for the highly talented becomes even more important in a two-dimensional...

The question of how the career path for professors should be structured is a central issue in the current debate on reforming higher education in Germany. In order to substantiate current discussions on promotion and faculty development this study presents empirical data on the biographies of...