Using choice experiments and latent-class modeling to investigate and estimate how academic economists value and trade off the attributes of academic positions*

We investigate how economists would choose among academic positions as a function of the levels of attributes such as department rank, their teaching load, and their salary. We identified all 1735 faculty in the top fifty economics departments and asked each five "Would you prefer to work in Department A or Department B," questions." A latentclass choice model was estimated, indentifying four classes; only average cites/year influence choice.What is preferred and the rates at which attributes substitute for attributes, and for money, vary substantially across the four classes. The largest two classes made choices consistent with homo economicus. *We thank Luke Rogers who was instrumental with survey production and data collection, and Erin Fletcher for editorial assistance. We thank Barbara Kanninen, Scott Savage, Douglass Shaw and Mara Thiene for detailed comments on earlier drafts.