title: Measuring nepotism through shared last names: the case of Italian Academia.
abstract: Nepotistic practices are detrimental for academia. Here I show how disciplines with a high likelihood of nepotism can be detected using standard statistical techniques based on shared last names among professors. As an example, I analyze the set of all 61,340 Italian academics. I find that nepotism is prominent in Italy, with particular disciplinary sectors being detected as especially problematic. Out of 28 disciplines, 9 - accounting for more than half of Italian professors - display a significant paucity of last names. Moreover, in most disciplines a clear north-south trend emerges, with likelihood of nepotism increasing with latitude. Even accounting for the geographic clustering of last names, I find that for many disciplines the probability of name-sharing is boosted when professors work in the same institution or sub-discipline. Using these techniques policy makers can target cuts and funding in order to promote fair practices.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, Computation Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America. sallesina@uchicago.edu
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Allesina
mesh_terms: D000047:Academies and Institutes / Q000941:ethics*; D005190:Family; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D010560:Personnel Selection / Q000941:ethics