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Via Bryan Caplan of the Armchair Economist mailing list:

http://www.iew.unizh.ch/wp/iewwp117.pdf

Institute for Empirical Research in Economics
University of Zurich
Working Paper Series
ISSN 1424-0459
Working Paper No. 117
PUBLISHING AS PROSTITUTION?
Choosing Between One‘s Own Ideas and Academic Failure
Bruno S. Frey
June 2002
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PUBLISHING AS PROSTITUTION?
Choosing Between
One’s Own Ideas
and
Academic Failure
by
Bruno S. Frey*
(University of Zurich)
(revised version of June 6, 2002)
* Bruno S. Frey is Professor of Economics, Institute for Empirical Economic Research, Bluemlisalpstr. 10, CH-
8006 Zurich, Switzerland. [email protected]. www.bsfrey.ch. Comments are most welcome.
I am grateful for helpful comments from Matthias Benz, Egon Franck, Robert Frank, René L. Frey, Daniel
Hamermesh, Reto Jegen, Simon Luechinger, Margit Osterloh, Stephan Meier and Hannelore Weck-Hannemann
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Abstract
Survival in academia depends on publications in refereed journals. Authors only get their papers accepted if they intellectually prostitute themselves by slavishly following the demands made by anonymous referees without property rights on the journals they advise. Intellectual prostitution is neither beneficial to suppliers nor consumers. But it is avoidable. The editor (with property rights on the journal) should make the basic decision of whether a paper is worth publishing or not. The referees only give suggestions on how to improve thepaper. The author may disregard this advice. This reduces intellectual prostitution and produces more original publications.
JEL classification: A11, Z00
Keywords: academic market, publications, economics of economics, intellectual prostitution
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I. Prostitution of Ideas and Academic Career
This paper will never be published in a (refereed) economics journal, nor will it be submitted
to a scholarly journal.