Citations of Most Often Cited Economists: Do Scholarly Books Matter More than Quality Journals?

This paper empirically investigates the determinants of citations based on the publication of the top 100 most often cited economists. The effects of publication age and author fame on subsequent citations are found to be positive and significant. Citations are also significantly affected by popular subfields in economics. However, journal quality measures, such as impact factors, download statistics and top‐4 elite journals, have insignificant effects on citations. In contrast, the citation effect of scholarly books is positive and significant, and its impact is even greater than those of journal quality measures.     

Evaluating The Research Output Of Australian Universities' Economics Departments

This paper presents measures of the research output of Australian economics departments. Our study covers the 640 academic staff at rank Lecturer and above in the 27 Australian universities with economics departments containing eight or more staff in April 2002. We construct publication measures based on journal articles, which can be compared with weighted publication measures, and citation measures, which can be compared with the publication measures. Our aim is to identify the robustness of rankings to the choice of method, as well as to highlight differences in focus of departments' research output. A striking feature of our measures is that the majority of economists in Australian university departments have done no research that has been published in a fairly long list of refereed journals over the last dozen years. They may publish in other outlets, but in any event their work is rarely cited. Thus, average research output is low because many academic economists in Australia do not view research as part of their job or, at least, suffer no penalty from failing to produce substantive evidence of research activity.     

Economic Scholarship at Elite Liberal Arts Colleges: A Citation Analysis with Rankings

Although prominent economists at elite universities produce the most influential scholarship, economists at the nation's leading liberal arts colleges make significant contributions. The author measures the influence of 439 economists employed at the 50 top liberal arts colleges and ranks departments and individuals on the basis of citations. The author discovered a hierarchy with a small number of departments whose faculty produce cited scholarship, and a small number of influential economists employed at liberal arts colleges. The determinants of citations are estimated. Greater experience and more publications but not lower teaching loads are correlated with more citations.     

A ranking of journals for the aspiring health economist

This article identifies and ranks 104 journals that might logically serve as the core for the interdisciplinary field of Health Economics. These journals are identified by analysing approximately 15 000 articles contained in the current CVs of 100 top health economists. Of the nearly 1200 journals spanned by these CVs, 104 journals were outlets for more than five of these top health economists. The 104 journals are ranked using eigenfactor and article influence scores as well as the percentile rank for each journal within its Institute for Scientific Information category. The primary intention is to create a broad-based journal list that exposes possible research outlets for aspiring health economists and to report the relative rankings of such outlets using established metrics.     

The Research Assessment Exercise, the state and the dominance of mainstream economics in British universities

In previous research on the impact of the Research AssessmentExercise on heterodox economics and heterodox economists inthe UK, the author concluded that reliance on Diamond List journalsto rank departments would drive economic departments to discriminatepositively in terms of their hiring, promotion and researchstrategies in favour of mainstream economists and their research,in order to maintain or improve their ranking. As a consequence,the author predicted there would be no or only a token presenceof heterodox economists in an increasing number of departments.Whether the conclusions still hold and the predictions materialiseis the subject of the paper.     

F. A. Hayek’s influence on Nobel Prize winners

F.A. Hayek’s broad research program has led some to conclude that his impact on economics has been minimal. This citation study examines the frequency of Nobel laureates cited by other laureates in the official Prize Lectures to understand how elite economists influence other elite economists. It finds that Hayek is the second most frequently mentioned laureate in the Prize Lectures, and he has the second most publication citations of the laureates. Hayek’s influence on the top tier of economists is substantial.

A Multidimensional Ranking of Australian Economics Departments

This study uses cluster analysis to classify Australian economics departments into groups that have similar quantities of research output, measured by two publication counts, and similar quality of research output, measured by a citation count. Three groups of departments are identified and factor analysis is used to rank the groups. Whether research output is measured in total or on a per staff basis, Melbourne is in the group that ranks first, the remaining members of the 'group of eight' are in one or other of the top two groups, and at least 15 other departments are in the third-ranked group.     

Where are the young specialists on the Soviet economy and what are they doing?

Not long ago a very senior and accomplished student of the Soviet economy expressed as his opinion that the distinguished economists of his generation would not be replaced when they retire from their chairs and professorships at the leading institutions. This reflection motivated me (a member of a subsequent generation) to explore both the prediction of nonreplacement and the possible reasons for it. If correct, the prediction of the disappearance of Soviet specialists at top-quality economics departments would have a very serious consequence for study of the Soviet economy, because fields die “from the top” in academia.     

Publish or Perish? The Increasing Importance of Publications for Prospective Economics Professors in Austria,Germany and Switzerland

Abstract. Tenure decisions depend, among other factors, on a candidate's career age and publication record. We associate publications with journal articles indexed in EconLit and measure publication output in equivalents of both top‐five journal articles and European Economic Review (EER) articles. We find that the average age of a professor in the year of his/her first appointment is 38, i.e. he or she is appointed approximately eight years after completing the PhD. Between 1970 and 2006, the average publication record at the time of the first appointment is equivalent to 1.5 standardized top‐five articles or 2.3 standardized EER articles. Publication records vary across subfields and have become more substantial over time. We predict that someone aspiring to a tenured position after 2011 should aim at an equivalent of four standardized top‐five articles or six standardized EER articles.     

Perspectives for Post-Keynesian Economics

The paper reviews and assesses the negative and positive advice which has been offered by various fellow economists to heterodox economists in general, and Post-Keynesian economists in particular, in light of changes that have occurred within neoclassical economics and in light of the rising hegemony of mainstream economics in economics departments. Various strategies are considered, among which is more engagement with orthodox dissenters, but it is concluded that the majority of heterodox economists ought instead to engage more with other heterodox economists and possibly other social sciences, developing and expanding their own agenda around real-world problems.     

Is it easier to publish in journals that have low impact factors?

We use publication data from all journals in economics, mathematics, physics and chemistry. We compute the ratio of publications that come from the top 25 US departments for each journal and use it as a measure of difficulty to publish in a journal. We find that there is a rather weak but positive correlation (0.20) between the impact factor and the difficulty measure.     

"Never Intended to be a Theory Of Everything": Domestic Labor in Neoclassical and Marxian Economics

This article is a comparative study of the treatment of domestic labor by neoclassical and Marxian economists. Before 1960, mainstream economics concentrated on production for the market, with serious analysis of housework confined to a handful of economists, whose efforts in this regard were marginalized by economics departments but supported by departments of home economics. Later mainstream analyses, first in agricultural economics and then in human capital theory, culminated in Gary Becker's "new household economics." Domestic labor was also neglected by Marxist thinkers, who argued that housework was being socialized under capitalism and would disappear altogether under socialism, but it was rediscovered by Marxist-feminists in the late 1960s. Housework continues, however, to pose serious analytical difficulties for both neoclassical and Marxian economists.     

Contributions of German and American jesuits to economics: The last 100 years

This article focuses on the contributions of six economists schooled in the Jesuit tradition. Four are Jesuit priests: Heinrich Pesch and Oswald von Nell-Breuning who are German, and Bernard Dempsey and Joseph Becker who are American. Two others, Goetz Briefs and William Waters, are lay persons who are referred to as “Jesuits without collars.” Five have direct ties to one another. Von Nell Breuning was a student of Pesch, as was Briefs. Waters was a student of Briefs, and Dempsey was influenced by Pesch and von Nell-Breuning. All five are solidarist economists who think about economics and economic affairs in a distinct way which originates with Pesch. Today they would be called personalist economists. The distinctive work of these six Jesuits is barely visible in the ranks of academic economists. Their contributions should be highlighted before they are lost forever to those who sense there is something inadequate about mainstream economics.     

Contributions of German and American jesuits to economics: The last 100 years

This article focuses on the contributions of six economists schooled in the Jesuit tradition. Four are Jesuit priests: Heinrich Pesch and Oswald von Nell-Breuning who are German, and Bernard Dempsey and Joseph Becker who are American. Two others, Goetz Briefs and William Waters, are lay persons who are referred to as “Jesuits without collars.” Five have direct ties to one another. Von Nell Breuning was a student of Pesch, as was Briefs. Waters was a student of Briefs, and Dempsey was influenced by Pesch and von Nell-Breuning. All five are solidarist economists who think about economics and economic affairs in a distinct way which originates with Pesch. Today they would be called personalist economists. The distinctive work of these six Jesuits is barely visible in the ranks of academic economists. Their contributions should be highlighted before they are lost forever to those who sense there is something inadequate about mainstream economics.     

A Comparison of the Publications of Female and Male Economists

The publication records of female and male economists are compared. Some explanations are offered for the differences.     

Ranking economics departments in the US South: an update

This study provides an update to Mixon and Upadhyaya’s (2001) ranking of Southern economics departments using research output indexed in EconLit. Ranking results from a ‘core’ (i.e. the top five faculty researchers) of each institution’s economics department reveal that Vanderbilt University, George Mason University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland and Georgia State University currently maintain the top five economics departments, respectively, in the US South. Relatedly, the five institutions rising the most from Mixon and Upadhyaya (2001) are Tulane University, Georgia State University, University of Texas–Dallas, Rice University and Florida International University, respectively.     

The Institutional Concentration of Authors in Top Journals of Economics During the Last Two Decades

This paper addresses the institutional concentration of authors in 15 top economics journals from 1977 to 1997. The concentration of authors' PhD affiliations is substantially higher than the concentration of authors' current affiliations. Relating input indicators, such as population, number of universities with economics departments, or manpower in economics, to publication output reduces the US dominance considerably, whereas Israel and the United Kingdom come out excellently. Exporters and importers of PhDs among universities are identified. Concentration ratios like the Herfindahl-Index lack a clear time trend. Nevertheless, the position of the United States has been weakening in recent years.     

The Publication Profile of Economists

Publication rates are reported from a set of 126 economics and related journals for 1,600 economists who received their doctorates between 1969 and 1988. The data strongly support the contention that publication of one article per year in established journals is exceptional.     

The Handelsblatt Rankings 2.0: Research Rankings for the Economics Profession in Austria,Germany, and Switzerland

The distinguishing feature of all Handelsblatt rankings published over the last ten years is that they could draw on premium quality bibliometric data. We present here the new method used by KOF and DICE to compile the 2017 Handelsblatt Rankings of university departments and individual economists. As in previous years, the rankings are based on quality weighted journal publications. We show that the benchmark results are robust to various changes in the employed method, in particular to changes in the convexity of the journal quality weighting scheme. In conclusion, we show how the collected data can be used to provide customized evaluations of entire academic careers of individual economists.