Academic careers : the effect of participation to post-doctoral program

This paper is devoted to assessment of post-doctoral programs for young PhD awarded in French Universities. Using longitudinal from the French Ministry of Education, our question lead to the econometric evaluation of post-doctoral participation on the probability to obtain a job as researcher in the public sector of research. Based on the estimation of a conditional bivariate Probit model and computation of marginal effects, we demonstrate that going through a post-doctoral program increases of around 10% then chances to get an academic job. This result is reinforced by the effect of financial support, especially standard academic grant, which rises of more than 20% the probability to be recruited as researcher in the French public sector.