Young “stars” in economics

I had not seen this paper before, by Kevin A. Bryan, here is the abstract:

We construct a data set of job flyouts for junior economists between 2013 and 2018 to investigate three aspects of the market for “stars.” First, what is the background of students who become stars? Second, what type of research does the top of the market demand? Third, where do these students take jobs? Among other results, we show that stars are more likely to be international and male than PhDs overall, that theoretical and semi-theoretical approaches remain dominant, that American programs both produce the most stars and hire even more, that almost none are hired by the private sector, and that there is a strong shift toward having pre-PhD full-time academic research jobs.

Is this good news or bad?  The paper is interesting throughout, here is another bit:

…both Americans and women are nearly twice as likely to have Applied Micro as a primary field compared to non-Americans and men.

As for country of origin of these star students, see p.5, I was surprised to see Germany rank second after the United States, with Italy and France not far behind, China coming next, then Argentina (!).

Via Soumaya Keynes.