Rent seeking in academia: The consultancy disease
Monday, October 1 2001
Abstract
HEADNOTEThe Consultancy disease is a type of rent seeking behavior in academia, and occurs when scholars spend time searching and working in public and private consultancies. It is shown that the Consultancy disease leads to lower equilibrium levels of academic work. Higher standards for scientific productivity and publications help to fight the 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).