Age, academic career and scientific performance of Czech economists

Abstract

There have been many papers (both theoretical and empirical) in last hundred years, which tried to explain the relationship between age and scientific output in the academia. Although most of those papers conclude that the productivity of scientists’ declines after reaching certain age and then continuously declines, there is still no agreement about factors, which stand behind the reverse U-shaped age-productivity curve. The aim of this paper is to summarize the theoretical arguments, which may explain the declining productivity of scientists in later phases of their life cycle. Moreover, it provides preliminary analysis of relationship between age and scientific output of Czech economists. Because the recent studies do not take age as relevant factor influencing the scientific performance, an alternative approach examining productivity dependency upon the phase of academic career is also provided.