Getting tenure in economics: evaluating the research record

Marginal revolution has a nice discussion of how a vita is evaluated for tenure here.

I would add a few points:

First, the derivative over time matters. If you have three great papers but they are all from your dissertation, this is much less good than three great papers, one of which is from your thesis and the other two of which came later. Papers in the dissertation are presumed to embody a lot of help from your committee and so (rightly in my view) count a bit less, absent evidence in the letters that the amount of help was less than is typical.

Second, if you co-author a lot with your dissertation advisor or someone of similar stature then it is really important to help solve the identification problem by having some good papers not with the advisor.

Third, some places will read the papers and some will not. Some pleases have deans and provosts who will trust them to read the papers and some will not. If you are at a place that reads the papers, then you can get away with having great papers in non-top-five journals. If you are at a place that does not trust the department to read the papers, then you need to max out on the bean-counting criterion in order to get the tenure you seek. Which sort of department you are in is something to find out early on after taking a job, if not sooner.

I will also add a couple of remarks about the situation at Notre Dame, which comes up in the MR comments. I know a bit about this as they have hired two of my former Maryland colleagues in recent years, plus I know Jim Sullivan who has been there for a while. I also know people who have advised ND over the years on how to sort out its economics situation. First, books do not count in economics. That may be good or bad but that is how it is. Someone who responds to that information by writing books is making an informed choice. Books are fine things - I read many of them - and I think writing big picture books is a great thing for senior faculty to do as they have the breadth of vision to do it well. But it is articles in refereed journals that count and I am not sure that is such a bad thing. Second, ND has faced a lot of demand from the folks who pay its bills (that is, parents and donors) over a period of at least a couple of decades to have an economics department that teaches and has some research prominence in standard neoclassical economics. There were attempts to transform the existing department into such a department over time. These attempts failed which resulted in the rather draconian solution of simply relabeling (and consigning to a slow death through attrition and lack of funds) the existing department and more or less starting anew. Third, ND is not just maximizing the national rankings. They are also trying to satisfy a demand among their customers for a more Catholic flavored faculty. This seems perfectly reasonable for a Catholic school. So I think the history and the politics are a bit richer than the MR commenter lets on. Moreoever, there is nothing sinister about the process. ND is trying to please its customers. That is exactly what it should be doing.