" Thou shalt not work alone "

Damien Besancenot (1) , Kim Van Huynh (2) , Francisco Serranito (3)

1 CEPN - Centre d'Economie de l'Université Paris Nord
2 LEM - Laboratoire d'Économie Moderne
3 LEO - Laboratoire d'Économie d'Orleans [UMR7322]

This paper focuses on the properties of the matching process which leads to scientific collaboration. In a first step, it proposes a simple theoretical model to describe the intertemporal choice of researchers facing successive opportunities of co-authoring papers. In a second part, the paper empirically assesses the properties of the model. The main empirical result is that the number and the productivity of a researcher's co-authors reflect the productivity of this researcher. This result is consistent with the assumption that co-authorship is motivated by a willingness to increase both the quality and the quantity of research output. As researchers with a lot of influent publications papers may create links with a large number of influential co-authors, co-authoring with highly productive academics appears as a signaling device of researchers' quality.

Mots clés: Co-authorship; matching; researchers' strategy

Domaines: Economies et finances

Damien Besancenot, Kim Van Huynh, Francisco Serranito. " Thou shalt not work alone ": Individual Productivity in Research and Co-authorship in economics. 2015. ⟨hal-01175758⟩