Monday, May 14, 2007

Inequality among Economists

In a previous post, I noted that income inequality among professors across different academic disciplines has been increasing. The same is apparently true within disciplines as well. In some data compiled by Dan Hamermesh on the salaries of full professors of economics, the ratio of the 90th percentile salary to the 10th percentile salary has steadily risen from 1.885 in 1998-99 to 2.057 in 2006-07.

Does anyone have a good explanation of this trend? I wonder if inequality in measures of productivity, such as publications and citations, has also been increasing.