Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T20:49:08.391Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Six Dimensions of Concentration in Economics: Evidence from a Large-Scale Data Set

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2020

Florentin Glötzl  and
Ernest Aigner Open the ORCID record for Ernest Aigner [Opens in a new window]
Florentin Glötzl*
Affiliation:
Institute for Ecological Economics, Department for Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business
Ernest Aigner
Affiliation:
Institute for Ecological Economics, Department for Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Argument

This paper argues that the economics discipline is highly concentrated, which may inhibit scientific innovation and change in the future. The argument is based on an empirical investigation of six dimensions of concentration in economics between 1956 and 2016 using a large-scale data set. The results show that North America accounts for nearly half of all articles and three quarters of all citations. Twenty institutions reap a share of 42 percent of citations, five journals a share of 28.5 percent, and 100 authors a share of 15.5 percent. A total of 2.8 percent of citations may be attributed to heterodox schools of thought. Also top articles are concentrated along these dimensions. Overall, concentration has strongly increased over the last six decades.

Keywords

economicsscientometricsconcentrationcitationsbibliometricsinequality
Type
Research Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 32 , Issue 4: Change and Persistence in Contemporary Economics , December 2019 , pp. 381 - 410
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

AEA. 2017. Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Curse of the Top Five. ASSA Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois. https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2017/preliminary/2153?page=8&per-page=50 (last accessed December 18, 2019).Google Scholar
Aigner, Ernest. 2018. Concentration in the Economic Discipline. https://github.com/ernestaigner/economics (last accessed December 18, 2019).Google Scholar
Aigner, Ernest, Aisleitner, Matthias, Glötzl, Florentin, and Kapeller, Jakob. 2018. The Focus of Academic Economics: Before and After the Crisis. INET Working Paper 75. New York City: Institute for New Economic Thinking.Google Scholar
Akerlof, George. 2017. Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Curse of the Top Five. ASSA Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois. https://www.aeaweb.org/webcasts/2017/curse (last accessed December 18, 2019).Google Scholar
Angrist, Joshua, Azoulay, Pierre, Ellison, Glenn, Hill, Ryan, and Feng Lu, Susan. 2017. “Economic Research Evolves: Fields and Styles”. American Economic Review 107(5):293–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birkmaier, Daniel, and Wohlrabe, Klaus. 2014. “The Matthew Effect in Economics Reconsidered.” Journal of Informetrics 8(4):880–889.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bornmann, Lutz, and Wohlrabe, Klaus. 2017. Normalization of Citation Impact in Economics. SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 3024474. Rochester NY: Social Science Research Network.Google Scholar
Card, David, and DellaVigna, Stefano. 2013. “Nine Facts about Top Journals in Economics.” Journal of Economic Literature 51(1):144–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colander, David. 1989. “Research on the Economics Profession.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 3(4):137–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colander, David. 2011. “Is the Fundamental Science of Macroeconomics Sound?” Review of Radical Political Economics 43(3):302–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colander, David, Holt, Richard P. F, and Rosser, J. Barkley. 2004. “The Changing Face of Mainstream Economics.” Review of Political Economy 16(4):485–499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colander, David, Holt, Richard P. F, and Rosser, J. Barkley. 2010. “How to win friends and (possibly) influence mainstream economists.” Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 32(3):397–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coupé, Tom. 2003. “Revealed Performances: Worldwide Rankings of Economists and Economics Departments, 1990–2000.” Journal of the European Economic Association 1(6):1309–1345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Raymond A. K., and Chung, Kee H. 1991. “Patterns of Research Output and Author Concentration in the Economics Literature.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 73(4):740.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, John B. 2008. “The Turn in Recent Economics and Return of Orthodoxy.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 32(3):349–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobusch, Leonhard, and Kapeller, Jakob. 2009. “"Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science?” New Answers to Veblen’s Old Question”. Journal of Economic Issues 43(4):867–898.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobusch, Leonhard, and Kapeller, Jakob. 2012. “Heterodox United vs. Mainstream City? Sketching a Framework for Interested Pluralism in Economics.” Journal of Economic Issues 46(4):1035–1058.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliott, Caroline, Greenaway, David, and Sapsford, David. 1998. “Who’s Publishing Who? The National Composition of Contributors to Some Core US and European Journals.” European Economic Review 42(1):201–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fourcade, Marion, Ollion, Etienne, and Algan, Yann. 2015. “The Superiority of Economists.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 29(1):89–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frey, Bruno S., and Rost, Katja. 2010. “Do Rankings Reflect Research Quality?” Journal of Applied Economics 13(1):1–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glötzl, Florentin, and Aigner, Ernest. 2018. “Orthodox Core–Heterodox Periphery? Contrasting Citation Networks of Economics Departments in Vienna.” Review of Political Economy 30(2):210–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heckman, James J. 2017. Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Curse of the Top Five. ASSA Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois. https://www.aeaweb.org/webcasts/2017/curse (last accessed December 18, 2019).Google Scholar
Hirsch, Barry T., Austin, Randall, Brooks, John, and Moore, J. Bradley. 1984. “Economics Departmental Rankings: Comment.” The American Economic Review 74(4):822–826.Google Scholar
Hodgson, Geoffrey, and Rothman, Harry. 1999. “The Editors and Authors of Economics Journals: A Case of Institutional Oligopoly?” The Economic Journal 109(453):165–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hogan, Timothy D. 1986. “The Publishing Performance of U.S. Ph.D. Programs in Economics during the 1970s”. The Journal of Human Resources 21 (2): 216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, John. 2013. “Ranking Journals.” The Economic Journal 123(570):F202–F222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalaitzidakis, Pantelis, Mamuneas, Theofanis P, and Stengos, Thanasis. 1999. “European Economics: A Recruitment System: An Appraisal Six Dimensions of Concentration in Economics: Evidence from a Large-Scale Data Setanalysis Based on Publications in the Core Journals.” European Economic Review 43(4):1150–1168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kapeller, Jakob. 2010. “Some Critical Notes on Citation Metrics and Heterodox Economics”. Review of Radical Political Economics 42(3):330–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kapeller, Jakob, and Springholz, Florian. 2016. Heterodox Economics Directory: Heterodox Study Programs. 6th edition. http://www.heterodoxnews.com/hed/study-programs.html (last accessed December 18, 2019).Google Scholar
Kim, Jinseok, and Diesner, Jana. 2016. “Distortive Effects of Initial-Based Name Disambiguation on Measurements of Large-Scale Coauthorship Networks.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 67(6):1446–1461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kocher, Martin, and Sutter, Matthias. 2001. “The Institutional Concentration of Authors in Top Journals of Economics during the Last Two Decades.” The Economic Journal 111(472):405–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laband, David N. 2013. “On the Use and Abuse of Economics Journal Rankings.” The Economic Journal 123(570):F223–F254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laband, David N., and Piette, Michael J. 1994. “The Relative Impacts of Economics Journals: 1970-1990.” Journal of Economic Literature 32(2):640–666.Google Scholar
Laband, David N., and Tollison, Robert D. 2003. “Dry Holes in Economic Research.” Kyklos 56(2):161–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larivière, Vincent, Gingras, Yves, and Archambault, Éric. 2009. “The Decline in the Concentration of Citations, 1900-2007.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 60(4):858–862.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Frederic S. 2004. “To Be a Heterodox Economist: The Contested Landscape of American Economics, 1960s and 1970s.” Journal of Economic Issues 38(3):747–763.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liebowitz, Stanley J., and Palmer, John P. 1984. “Assessing the Relative Impacts of Economics Journals.” Journal of Economic Literature 22(1):77–88.Google Scholar
Medoff, Marshall H. 2003. “Editorial Favoritism in Economics?” Southern Economic Journal 70(2):425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Medoff, Marshall H. 2006. “Evidence of a Harvard and Chicago Matthew Effect.” Journal of Economic Methodology 13(4):485–506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merton, Robert K. 1968. “The Matthew Effect in Science: The Reward and Communication Systems of Science Are Considered.” Science 159(3810):56–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Modigliani, Franco, and Miller, Merton H. 1963. “Corporate Income Taxes and the Cost of Capital: A Correction.” The American Economic Review 53(3):433–443.Google Scholar
Rip, Arie., and Courtial, Jean-Pierre. 1984. “Co-word Maps of Biotechnology: An Example of Cognitive Scientometrics.” Scientometrics 6(6):381–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
R-Statistics. 2018. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. https://www.R-project.org/ (last accessed December 18, 2019).Google Scholar
Rupp, Nicholas G., and McKinney, Carl Nicholas. 2002. “The Publication Patterns of the Elite Economics Departments: 1995-2000.” Eastern Economic Journal 28(4):523–538.Google Scholar
Sterman, John D., and Wittenberg, Jason. 1999. “Path Dependence, Competition, and Succession in the Dynamics of Scientific Revolution.” Organization Science 10(3):322–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stockhammer, Engelbert, and Ramskogler, Paul. 2012. “Post Keynesian Economics: How to Move Forward.” In In Defense of Post-Keynesian and Heterodox Economics: Responses to Their Critics, edited by Frederic, S. Lee and Lavoie, Marc, 42–61. Routledge Advances in Heterodox Economics 15. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sutter, Matthias, and Kocher, Martin. 2001. “Power Laws of Research Output. Evidence for Journals of Economics.” Scientometrics 51(2):405–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anon. 2009. “The Keynes Comeback.” The Economist 393(8651):103–104.Google Scholar
Anon. 2013. “Keynes’ New Heirs.” The Economist 409(8863):59–59.Google Scholar
Tol, Richard S.J. 2009. “The Matthew Effect Defined and Tested for the 100 Most Prolific Economists.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 60(2):420–426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tol, Richard S.J. 2013. “The Matthew Effect for Cohorts of Economists.” Journal of Informetrics 7(2):522–527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tollison, Robert D., and Goff, Brian L. 1986. “Citation Practices in Economics and Physics.” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE)/Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 142(3):581–587.Google Scholar
Varga, Attila V. 2011. “Measuring the Semantic Integrity of Scientific Fields: A Method and a Study of Sociology, Economics and Biophysics.” Scientometrics 88(1):163–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wu, Stephen. 2007. “Recent Publishing Trends at the AER, JPE and QJE.” Applied Economics Letters 14(1):59–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar