Thanks for the comment. I agree with the propositions that its easier for a L&E prof in an economics department to get a good graduate level RA than it is for a law professor for both the funding and incentive reasons you mention. But it seems to be the case that there are more empirical L&E types in law schools now than there was ten years ago despite the trends I’ve noted.

This suggests to me that law school empirical L&E types are finding a way to solve some of these problems though I’m not sure exactly how. I suspect that joint appointments might be one way to mitigate the career incentive problems. Also, the law school RA rate is good for data entry purposes. P.S., the $35,000 seems very high to me, but its been a few years since I was a grad econ RA.

I suspect that RA problems are not big enough to force L&E profs to migrate from law schools. There are a lot of advantages to staying put: money and tenure standards are just two of them. If anything forces L&E empiricists to migrate from law schools, it will be that their colleagues become disinterested in their work, law schools stop valuing it, tenure is denied to some juniors in the field, and the next generation gets the message. I hope that doesn’t happen.

Congrats on a wonderful and thoughtful set of posts. As l&e moves to more quantitative empirical work, it strikes me that this will take it outside of law schools more and more. Here is why- a half time RA who is a grad student in econ costs $35,000 a year more or less. Law schools do not pay that sort of money for RAs, with RA amounts general in the $1,000-$5,000 range. Law schools also do not reward outside funding from profs the way that other departments do and so law profs may not have the incentives to hustle for grant money because it is not tied to issues such as tenure and promotion. Moreover the incentives of econ grad student RAs do not favor law profs as opposed to econ profs. More times than not, an econ grad student will want to be the RA of an econ professor rather than a law professor because an econ professor is more likely able to help the RA in career advancement in academia , government or the private sector. This suggests that law profs will not be choosing from among the best econ RAs.