Dissertation advisors and job market outcomes by Rose and Shekhar

 Here's a paper on the economics job market, and the influence of dissertation advisers.

Adviser Connectedness and Placement Outcomes in the Economics Job Market, by Michael E. Rose and Suraj Shekhar, forthcoming in Labour Economics

Abstract: We study the role of social networks in the academic job market for graduate students of Economics. We find that the connectedness of a student’s advisor in the coauthor network significantly improves her job market outcome. We use two identification strategies and find that a) higher Eigenvector centrality of an adviser leads to her student getting placed at a better ranked institution, and b) larger distance between an adviser and an institution decreases the probability that her students are placed there. Our study sheds light on the importance of social connections in a labour market where information frictions regarding job openings are virtually absent.

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"Our setting, the academic job market for Economists, is special in that information frictions regarding job openings are (almost) absent due to Job Openings for Economists. Thus, our finding that social networks play a role in this market is likely because they help decrease the uncertainty about an applicant’s quality."

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I'm reminded of the timeless joke about how rabbits eat wolves: if you don't know it, there are many versions on the internet, here  (and this one comes with a bonus joke: Rabbit's Ph.D. Thesis and Lion's Watch Repair Business).