Indirect Contacts in Hiring: The Economics Job Market

Using two identification strategies, we demonstrate a positive relationship between the connectedness of a PhD adviser (in the coauthor network) and the placement of her student. In method one, identification is achieved by using changes in the centrality of the adviser’s coauthors in the year of student placement as an exogenous shock to the adviser’s centrality. Our second strategy uses the death of faculty members as an exogenous shock to show that the probability of a student being placed at a particular university reduces when the ‘social distance’ between her adviser and that university increases due to the death.