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

Glötzl, Florentin; Aigner, Ernest

doi:10.1017/s0269889720000034

Cited by 19 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 45 publications

(58 reference statements)

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“…Finally, there is reason to question why any particular set of journals should be treated as the top tier of the discipline. Articles in the top five are on average generously cited, but citations are highly skewed (Gloetzl and Aigner, ; Hamermesh, ). The most cited articles in lower tier journals often have more citations than a fair share of the top‐five articles.…”

Section: Previous Research and Discussion On The Top‐five Focusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… For some recent studies see, e.g., Gloetzl and Aigner (), who study different forms of article and citation concentration within the economics discipline; Card and DellaVigna () and Hamermesh (), who present facts about the articles and authors publishing in the top five; Baghestanian and Popov () and Conley and Önder (), who analyze determinants of the early career success of new PhDs. Henrekson and Waldenström () show that the choice of output measure greatly affects the ranking and allocation of total research output across senior researchers. …”

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confidence: 99%

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The Geography and Concentration of Authorship in the Top Five: Implications For European Economics

Henrekson

2019

Scottish J Political Eco

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We study to what degree authors who publish in the five most prestigious journals in economics have previously published there and in which world region they are based. Although still high, the concentration of United States-based and previously published top-five authors has decreased. This trend is driven by increased co-authorship between USA and non-USA scholars and between scholars with and without previous top-five articles. Only around 5% of all articles each year are written solely by first-time authors from outside the United States, and this share has not increased since the mid-1990s. Against this background, we argue that European institutions should be wary of putting too much emphasis on publishing in these five journals. Both the advancement and diversity of the economics discipline may otherwise suffer. 1The JIF is determined by the average number of citations that a journal's articles get over a rolling time window.

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Section: Previous Research and Discussion On The Top‐five Focusmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

The Geography and Concentration of Authorship in the Top Five: Implications For European Economics

Henrekson

2019

Scottish J Political Eco

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“…was that they don't think about it' (for empirical evidence based on a citation analysis see e.g. Glötzl & Aigner, 2017or Aistleitner et al, 2017. A slightly different, but complementary point is made by Akerlof (2020), who argues that economics suffers from numerous 'sins of omissions' that produce a bias towards 'hard evidence'.…”

Section: Outside Criticism I: the Discipline Is Already Pluralistmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pluralism in economics: its critiques and their lessons

Gräbner

Strunk

2020

Journal of Economic Methodology

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This paper starts with an evaluation of three common arguments against pluralism in economics: (1) the claim that economics is already pluralist, (2) the argument that if there was the need for greater plurality, it would emerge on its own, and (3) the assertion that pluralism means 'anything goes' and is, thus, unscientific. Pluralist responses to all three arguments are summarized. The third argument is shown to relate to a greater challenge for pluralism: an epistemological trade-off between diversity and consensus that suggests moving from a discussion about 'pros' and 'cons' towards a discussion about the adequate degree of plurality. The paper shows how the trade-off originates from two main challenges: the need to derive adequate quality criteria for a pluralist economics, and the necessity to propose strategies that facilitate the communication across different research programs. It concludes with some strategies to meet these challenges.

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“…Seen from a scientometric perspective, the 'top-five' are responsible for a remarkable amount of concentration. For instance, in analysing a large-scale sample of publications in economics, Gloetzl and Aigner (2019) found, that the 'top-five' account for nearly 30 per cent of all citations within the economics discipline. Moreover, almost 60 per cent of the 1000 most-cited articles are published in 'topfive' journals (see also Laband (2013)).…”

Section: On the Institutional Peculiarities Of Economics: The Power Omentioning

confidence: 99%

The Trade (Policy) Discourse in Top Economics Journals

Aistleitner

Pühringer

2020

New Political Economy

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In the aftermath of recent populist upheavals in Europe, nationalist economic policies challenge the overly positive view on economic integration and the reduction of trade barriers established by standard economic theory. For quite a long time the great majority of economists supported trade liberalisation policies, at least those actively engaged in policy advice or public debates. In this paper, we examine the elite economics discourse on trade policies during the last 20 years regarding specific characteristics of authors, affiliations, citation patterns, the overall attitude towards trade, as well as the methodological approach applied in these papers. Our analysis yields the following results: First, the hierarchical structure of economics also manifests in the debate about trade. Second, while we found some indications of a shift towards more empirically oriented work, quite often empirical data is solely used to calibrate models rather than to challenge potentially biased theoretical assumptions. Third, top economic discourses on trade are predominantly characterised by a normative bias in favour of tradeliberalisation-policies. Forth, we found that other-than-economic impacts and implications of trade policies (political, social and cultural as well as environmental issues) to a great extent either remain unmentioned or are rationalised by means of pure economic criteria. KEYWORDS Trade evaluation; trade policies; 'empirical turn'; social studies of economics; bibliometric analysis; top economic journals JEL CODES A12; A14; B41; F10 It has long been an unspoken rule of public engagement for economists that they should champion trade and not dwell too much on the fine print. (Rodrik 2018

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

Cited by 19 publications

References 45 publications

The Geography and Concentration of Authorship in the Top Five: Implications For European Economics

The Geography and Concentration of Authorship in the Top Five: Implications For European Economics

Pluralism in economics: its critiques and their lessons

The Trade (Policy) Discourse in Top Economics Journals

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