Abstract
The observation that a socioeconomic agent with a high reputation gets a disproportionately higher recognition for the same work than an agent with lower reputation is typical in career development and wealth. This phenomenon, which is known as Matthew effect in the literature, leads to an increasing inequality over time. The present paper employs an optimal control model to study the implications of the Matthew effect on the optimal efforts of a scientist into reputation.We essentially obtain two different solutions. In case the scientist is not so talented, his or her academic career is doomed to fail. The scientist’s reputation decreases over time and after some time the scientific career stops. For a more gifted scientist the optimal solution is history-dependent. Still for a low level of the initial reputation, scientific life stops at some point, but otherwise a fruitful scientific career is awaiting.
Highlights
The quality of his/her published work is certainly an important input to increase a scientist’s reputation
By the introduction of the concept of the Stalling Equilibrium, we extend the literature on history-dependent solutions
In addition to having low cost of scientific effort, which is a necessary existence condition for the Stalling Equilibrium, the positive influence of the Matthew effect is relatively large and the scientist is able to put a lot of effort in increasing his or her reputation, the Stalling Equilibrium has the property that the solution is abnormal at this particular point
Summary
This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. Kortc,d, Andrea Seidle aDepartment for Operations Research and Control Systems, Institute of Statistics and Mathematical Methods in Economics, Wiedner Hauptstraße 8, 1040 Vienna, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria bInternational Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Schloßplatz 1, 2361 Laxenburg, Austria cTilburg School of Economics and Management, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, Netherlands dDepartment of Economics, University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium eDepartment of Business Decisions and Analytics, Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1, 1090 Vienna, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
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