Rent seeking in academia: The consultancy disease

1. Introduction

The economic analysis of academic institutions (commonly related to economics departments) has addressed issues such as the job mobility (Skeels and Fairbanks, 1968/1969); salaries of university professors (Hamermesh et al., 1982); tenure positions (Carmichael, 1988); quality of research (Stigler, 1982); teaching quality (Becker, 1975), departmental management (Borooah, 1994), and others. Just recently some authors have paid attention to the rent seeking in universities, through the behavior of scholars and committees (Diamond, 1993; Tullock, 1993).