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Recently our department lost one of the best professors who was attracted by a better University. If we were a football club, and he were a leading player, we would receive many millions of compensation.

(a) Why Universities (U) do not sign contracts with best professors (P) similar to contracts with football players? That is, U cannot fire P mid-contract, but P can move to other University mid-contract only for a transfer fee. Long-term contracts of this form would protect P from loosing job mid-contract in countries without tenure, and protect U from loosing best staff. After all, is it fair if U supports a young very talented person, offers reduced teaching load, a lot of money for conferences, etc., in a hope that they will have a Field medallist in 5-10 years, but this person moves to Oxford or Cambridge after first major publications? Note that counterarguments like "this is risky for U because P may start working bad, and unacceptable for P because restricts freedom to move, even for family reasons" applies exactly in the same way to football players as well.

(b) If transfer fee existed, what would be current transfer records? How much would best Universities be ready to pay for, say, Fields medallists?

P.S. I understand that I am not asking specific research-level math question here, but so are many high-voted questions on this website, e.g. When should a supervisor be a co-author? or Have you solved problems in your sleep?

Bogdan Grechuk
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  • Question (b) seems very speculative. No one has any experience with this, as far as I can see. – Ben McKay Feb 07 '23 at 10:49
  • Was the P attracted by a better University by and large or by a better sallary mainly? – Evgeny Kuznetsov Feb 07 '23 at 10:49
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    What's next, trading cards for math professors? – Christian Clason Feb 07 '23 at 10:50
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    Your analogy fails because football generates interest of millions and is a billion dollar industry. In contrast, How many first year university students can even name a fields medallist? – Hercule Poirot Feb 07 '23 at 11:09
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    I think more or less every mathematician agrees that it is kinda of annoying that football players or DJs or talk show hosts usually have a better salary than mathematicians. It's an unfair world! – Pietro Majer Feb 07 '23 at 11:32
  • It is very easy to escape from a "forced employment" by showing very poor performance or doing things that will get you fired on the spot. For instance comments on gay people would very easily get you fired. Trying to flirt with a student is another option to end your contract. – Vincent Granville Feb 07 '23 at 12:16
  • Football players can also intentionally demonstrate poor performance to get transferred, and sometimes this really happens, but this does not invalidate the whole idea of transfers for a fee. After trying to flirt with a student one would not only get fired from the current University, but also an offer from the new University would be cancelled. – Bogdan Grechuk Feb 07 '23 at 15:21
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    This is a very interesting question, though not for this site. Are you familiar with the academic literature on optimal contract theory? – Steven Landsburg Feb 07 '23 at 19:57
  • I started to write an answer referencing some results from optimal contract theory, but I see that the question is closed (and I agree with the reasons for closing). But here's one result to give you the flavor: under pretty general circumstances, firms underpay young people and overpay old people (relative to their expected productivity) precisely in order to give young people an incentive to stick around, making it worthwhile to invest in those young people's development. (This works best when there is a mandatory retirement age so you're not overpaying old people for too long.) – Steven Landsburg Feb 07 '23 at 20:03
  • CONTINUED --- If you Google for "optimal employment contract" you will find many many papers on the subject; the ones that come up high in the Google search tend to be quite good papers. – Steven Landsburg Feb 07 '23 at 20:05

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The answer to (a) is straightforward: any contract with a clause that the employee cannot freely change jobs mid-contract will be illegal in most jurisdictions, as that amounts to selling oneself to slavery. Or, passing to the contrapositive, if it were possible for universities, it would be also possible for other employers, and everyone would do it.

The closest thing in existence is a non-compete clause, but those are only enforceable when there's a real need to protect the employer, such as a possibility that the employee will use trade secrets or confidential information for competition. There's no way this could apply to university professors.

For football players, the reason they cannot change clubs for free is that clubs "voluntarily" agree to federation rules, as this is required for participation in leagues. Federations, in turn, "voluntarily" further agree to international rules, as this is required for participation in international tournaments. Where there's no overarching authority and no strong monetary stimulus to obey its rules, there are no payments - e.g., NBA does not pay for players they draft from overseas.

Kostya_I
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