This paper investigates the role of skills and the division of labor among participants in collective inventions. Our analysis draws on a large sample of projects registered at Sourceforge.net, the world's largest incubator of open source software activity. We test the hypothesis that the level...

This paper investigates whether the quality of higher education and, in particular, its research performance stimulate graduates' research-oriented careers. More specifically, exploiting a very rich data-set on university graduates and the higher education institutions they attended, we...

An increasing number of countries are introducing gender quotas in scientific committees. We analyze how a larger presence of female evaluators affects committee decision-making using information on 100,000 applications to associate and full professorships in all academic disciplines in two...

This papers studies how the presence of women in academic committees affects the chances of success of male and female candidates. We use evidence from Italy, where candidates to Full and Associate Professor positions are required to qualify in a nation-wide evaluation known as Abilitazione...

We examine how the presence of connections in scientific committees affects researchers' decision to apply and their chances of success. We exploit evidence from Italian academia, where in order to be promoted to an associate or full professorship, researchers are firstly required to qualify in...

In recent years the academic world has experienced a mushrooming of journals that falsely pretend to be legitimate academic outlets. We study this phenomenon using information from 46,000 researchers seeking promotion in Italian academia. About 5% of them have published in journals included in...

In recent years the academic world has experienced a mushrooming of journals that falsely pretend to provide peer review. We study the quantity and quality of publications in dubious journals using information from the CVs of 46,000 researchers seeking promotion in Italian academia. We find that...

Several countries have recently introduced gender quotas in hiring and promotion committees at universities. This paper studies whether these policies increase the presence of women in top academic positions. The identification strategy exploits the random assignment mechanism in place between...

This paper analyzes the role of connections in academic promotions. We exploit evidence from centralized evaluations in Spain, where evaluators are randomly assigned to promotion committees. We find that prior connections between candidates and evaluators have a dramatic impact on candidates'...