The effect of academic mobility on research performance: The case of Italy

Abstract This work investigates the effects of researchers’ mobility on their research performance. The reference context is that of national intrasector mobility, in a country, Italy, characterized by a research system lacking the typical elements of an academic labor market. In particular, the analysis was conducted on 568 academics working at national universities and affected by mobility in the period 2009–2014. The effect of mobility on the variation of performance at the turn of the transfer was analyzed considering the interplay of demographic/sociological characteristics of the researchers, as well as contextual factors related to both the organization of origin and destination. Results show that it is the less productive academics who represent the larger share of those who move, and more than half of the mobile academics worsen their performance after the transfer.