Power and Publications in Chinese Academia

In power-oriented societies, academia may not be immune to the influence of power. This paper studies the power-publication link by applying an event-study strategy to a panel dataset of the publication and biographical information of deans of economics schools in Chinese universities. We find that (i) deanship increases an individual’s publication by 0.7 articles per year; (ii) the increased publications stem from work coauthored with other researchers within the same university; (iii) the topics of the increased publications are more likely to deviate from the deans’ research area prior to becoming deans; and (iv) the power effect is smaller for top universities and leading journals, and for scholars with more pre-dean publications. These patterns appear consistent with the role of power in resource allocation rather than the impact of ability or reputation of the deans and thus have implications on distortions in knowledge production.