Postdoctoral mobility and returnees' careers in Italian academia

This paper investigates the relationship between international postdoctoral stays and academic career advancement among researchers returning to the Italian university system. Using a unique dataset of Italian PhD holders observed over a 30-year period, we analyze how international postdoctoral stays are associated with two key career outcomes: (i) the time between PhD completion and first appointment as Assistant Professor ( time-to-entry ), and (ii) the time between Assistant Professor appointment and promotion to Associate Professor ( time-to-promotion ). We identify international postdoctoral stays by tracing foreign affiliations in researchers' publication records and examine how their association with career progression is moderated by institutional inbreeding, home-country linkages, and the persistence of international research networks. To explore these relationships, we apply a Cox proportional hazards model combined with entropy balancing. Our findings were validated by using curriculum vitae information for a subsample of researchers. We found that international postdoctoral stays are associated with slower entry into the academic system but are positively related to shorter time-to-promotion. Notably, this association is strongest for researchers promoted at universities other than their alma mater . We also observe that maintaining a strong home-country publishing network is associated with quicker entry as Assistant Professor, while sustained collaboration in postdoc-period co-author networks is linked to faster promotion to Associate Professor. • Postdocs returnees to the Italian academic system take longer time to get an Assistant Professorship position. • Controlling for productivity, postdocs returnees get promoted faster. • Postdoctoral stays longer than 18 months at prestigious foreign host institutions are associated with faster promotion in “non-inbreeding” universities. • The Italian academic labor market has increasingly rewarded quality and mobility among recent PhD cohorts.