The micro‐geography of academic research: How distinctive is economics?

Abstract

This study examines micro‐geographic clustering in the production and recognition of academic research. Three U.S. ZIP codes are associated with over 40 percent of articles in the top five economics journals and those articles garnered one‐half of all citations in these journals from 2000 to 2015. Such micro‐geographic concentration is not apparent in other disciplines, even those like chemistry that rely on specialized laboratories. Concentration of citations to economics articles whose authors are associated with a few key ZIP codes has strengthened over time, even as it has weakened for other disciplines. This micro‐geographic concentration may increase systemic risk by reducing the diversity of economics research that is published and cited and may lead to insufficient research attention to local context.

The authors of economics journals revisited: evidence from a large-scale replication of Hodgson and Rothman (1999)

“…That these simultaneously reinforcing relationships shape institutional hierarchies becomes especially clear when thinking about the close interconnections between specific economics departments with great visibility and prestige (most prominently: Harvard, Chicago and the MIT; see also Medoff (2006)), the discipline's major outlets (like QJE, AER or Econometrica) and the important role US-based PhD programs play for the education of economic research professionals. Thus, by analyzing these relations in greater depth we indeed find that important authors, contributions, departments, and outlets are strongly concentrated in terms of their spatial distribution (Gibson, 2021), their personal as well as professional networks (Colussi, 2018) as well as their biography (e.g. shared PhD-granting institutions).…”

“…For conducting our empirical investigation, we employ three main sources of bibliographic and biographic data namely (a) Clarivate's annually published journal rankings labeled as Journal Citation Reports (JCR), (b) EconLit as a core database on academic contributions in economics and (c) geographic clusters (together with Chicago and Stanford) represent articles that receive more than the half (55%) of all citations to articles in the top 5 journals (Gibson 2021). manually collected information on the authors in our sample found on CVs and professional websites.…”

“…by citing mainly sources from high-impact journals, while ignoring contributions published in less well-known outlets. Gibson (2021) provides an interdisciplinary perspective on the institutional concentration of authors of the top 5 journals in economics as compared to other disciplines. An analysis of the author-affiliations in these journals in four different years (2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015) reveals that three U.S. ZIP codes, that cover Harvard, NBER, Chicago and Stanford, are associated with over 40% of articles in economics 1 .…”

Suggestions for further reading

“…There is a well-defined ranking of journals, with the 'Top Five' dominating all other publications (see the chapter by Heckman and Moktan in this eBook), and a strong concentration of economists from top departments in the leadership of its most important professional association. 3 Gibson (2018) studies the micro-geography of academic research and finds that the concentration of Top Five journals citations in the top three zip codes is much higher in economics than in other fields. In economics, the top three zip codes capture 20% of citations (when NBER affiliations are included in the data, this share increases to 30%) while in sociology, psychology, marketing, philosophy, and chemistry the top three zip codes capture between 7% and 12% of total citations.…”