The production economics of economics production

How is new economic knowledge produced over time? That depends on how the expertise of authors is managed within economic journals. Using data from 41 major economics journals spanning 21 years (1994–2014), we find that both the intensive margin (article length) and extensive margin (article number) of the discipline have been growing. In particular, the extensive margin has outgrown the intensive margin, such that each article produces absolutely more but relatively less knowledge. This pattern is highly consistent with a model of within‐journal specialization. As predicted by the model, the share of an individual article shrinks less in general interest journals and in more prestigious journals, where expertise is less substitutable across topics.     

Macmillan economics

Tim Farmiloe (publishing academic division) and Stephen Rutt (publisher, higher-education division) outline Macmillan's publishing plans for economics books.     

hayek's economics

The dispersal of information in the economy is the key to Hayek's analysis of economic planning, the trade cycle and entrepreneurship. Gerald Steele, a lecturer at Lancaster University, explores Hayek's analysis. The function of the market is to coordinate this dispersed information.     

election economics

Economic management is crucial to winning elections, Robert Lind of UBS Phillips and Drew reviews the prospects and outlines possible strategies for victory.     

routledge economics

Alan Jarvis, economics editor of Routledge, outlines his publishing plans for the coming year. He also describes Routledge's role as Hayek's publisher.     

The economics of a good party: Social mechanics and the legitimization of art/culture

Putting value on cultural goods is a messy business. Cultural value is not just an economic act but instead part of an intense social process of valorization and legitimization. Art/culture is socially consumed and socially aware. Economic value is determined by intangible (and ephemeral) social value formed from and within specific contexts by particular people, the “scene”, so to speak. What are the mechanisms by which the social dynamics of art/culture impact its economic legitimacy? This article looks at how art/culture attains market value, focusing on the social contexts by which culture is produced, evaluated and distributed.     

Optimal agglomerations in dynamic economics

We study rational expectations equilibrium problems and social optimum problems in infinite horizon spatial economies in the context of a Ramsey type capital accumulation problem with geographical spillovers. We identify sufficient local and global conditions for the emergence (or not) of optimal agglomeration, using techniques from monotone operator theory and spectral theory in infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces. We show that agglomerations may emerge, with any type of returns to scale (increasing or decreasing) and with the marginal productivity of private capital increasing or decreasing with respect to the spatial externality. This is a fairly general result indicating the importance of the network structure of the spatial externality relative to the properties of the aggregate production function. Our analytical methods can be used to systematically study optimal potential agglomeration and clustering in dynamic economics.     

edward elgar economics

Edward Elgar, managing director of publishers Edward Elgar, outlines his publishing plans for the coming year.     

Oxford UP economics

Andrew Schuller, economics editor of the Oxford University Press, outlines his publishing plans for the coming year.     

harcourt brace economics

Jennifer Pegg, economics editor with Harcourt Brace, outlines her publishing plans for economics books for the rest of 1993 and beyond.     

black well economics

In the first of a series of articles by economics editors at leading publishers, Mark Allin outlines what economics books Blackwell plans to publish over the next year.     

Social desirability bias in PSM surveys and behavioral experiments: Considerations for design development and data collection

Social desirability issues are long known, but not long gone. Across major purchasing and supply management (PSM) research streams, surprisingly few empirical studies explicitly address social desirability bias (SDB), despite SDB constituting a potentially limiting factor. With regard to surveys and behavioral experiments as two of the most widely used empirical methods in PSM, SDB can represent a critical issue. A first step should therefore be to collect and fully report data on SDB in all such studies. The present note then continues by providing an overview of methodological considerations for PSM researchers to mitigate social desirability issues before they arise in their surveys and behavioral experiments. We describe eight potential mitigation approaches, namely disguising the study's research purpose, assuring anonymity and confidentiality, indirect questioning, adapting the wording of single items, broadening response modes, conducting preparatory cognitive interviews, using multiple sources, and applying multiple research methods. In describing this repertoire of preventive measures, we point authors and review teams to both the broader methodological literature and PSM studies that have used such approaches.     

Dualizing optimization problems in mathematical economics

In this paper it is shown how the duality theory of mathematical programming can be applied to many kinds of optimization problems in mathematical economics, even if no objective functions is available, and the usual definition of optimality is replaced by so-called weak optimality. In the latter case only a slight reformulation of the Lagrange problem is required. Two theorems are shown for abstract time-lagged optimization problems over a countably infinite number of periods. The first one is concerned with introducing themultipliers all at once, leading to the consideration of purely finitely additive multipliers, whereas the second one is concerned with introducing them one by one. In general the paper stresses the method of obtaining duality results.     

Regular competitive equilibria in disequilibrium economics

Regular competitive equilibria, in the sense of Guy Laroque, play an important role in disequilibrium economics. In this paper it is shown that the set of economies with only regular competitive equilibria, is open and dense in the set of all economies with respect to the strong Whitney-topology.