Non-tenured post-doctoral researchers’ job mobility and research output: An analysis of the role of research discipline, department size, and coauthors

•I analyze how mobility impacts non-tenured post-doctoral researchers’ publications.•Theoretically, mobility affects human and social capital and thereby publications.•OLS and matching results show some support for social and human capital effects.•Department size, coauthors, and research discipline are important moderators.•In the short term, mobility decreases publications across research contexts. To succeed in academia, non-tenured researchers aim to maximize their quality-adjusted research output. This paper analyzes if and how changing institutional affiliations as a non-tenured post-doctoral researcher influences publications, and how potential effects depend on the context of the researcher. Theoretically, moving to another university at another place can have positive and negative effects on career success. On the one hand when moving to another institution one stands to gain knowledge (human capital), colleagues and coauthors (social capital). On the other hand part of one's knowledge might no longer be relevant and contacts to colleagues and even coauthors might be lost. In line with the latter arguments, matching analysis of an extensive dataset of German-speaking economists and management researchers reveals a short-term negative effect on publications across contexts. Examining the researchers’ contexts reveals that this negative effect of mobility seems to be driven by researchers with social capital (i.e. coauthors or colleagues) tied to the doctorate granting institution.