Publish or teach? The role of the scientific environment on academics' multitasking

This article analyzes how scientific environment can affect researchers' job design. In a principal agent framework, we model researchers's choice between substitutable tasks, publishing or teaching, according to their individual abilities and their scientific environment. The model shows that a dynamic scientific environment increases individual investment in research, regardless of researchers' abilities. Using an original French data set of economics professors, the econometric results confirm this prediction but advocate for a gradual implementation of these spillovers effects.