Doing Economics

6
Doing Service
“Service” is the broad term whereby economics and other disciplines refer
to activities that are aimed at providing the public goods necessary for
researchers to be able do research. Service activities can range from the
local (e.g., serving on the undergraduate committee in your department) to
the regional (e.g., organizing a session at the annual meeting of the
Southern Economic Association), and from the national (e.g., serving on the
board of directors of the Canadian Economics Association) to the
international (e.g., serving as treasurer of the European Economic
Association). Even in a career outside of academia, opportunities for
service will abound if you decide to remain involved in research.
If you are planning on a career in academia, it is best to realize sooner
rather than later that in addition to doing good research and teaching well,
you will eventually have to do your share of service if you wish to get merit
raises and promotions.
1
Modern universities are in many ways different
from other hierarchies (in the Williamson 1975 sense of the word), but one
way in which they clearly differ is faculty governance. At most of the
world’s universities, a group of employees who are not professional
managers but who instead have emerged from faculty ranks govern the
hierarchy. Thus, whereas modern run-of-the-mill widget-making firms often
hire someone with an MBA to manage the firm instead of promoting a
widget-maker to the rank of manager, universities tend to be run by
academics, from the president (or chief executive officer) and the provost
(or chief academic officer) on down to department chairs and program
directors. So if you hope to have a fruitful academic career, it is best to plan
for doing service.
The bad news is that, as its name indicates, service tends to be either
unpaid work, or work where the pay falls well short of marginal
productivity of labor. The good news is that service comes in many shapes

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and colors, which means you typically can choose the kind of service that is
right for you.