Nea presidential address, 1993: Why black economists?

This article looks, with humor, at the role of black economists in academia and in the economics profession.     

Publishing and assessing the research of economists: Lessons from public health

We highlight a growing concern in the economics profession that young scholars face incentives that are misaligned with conducting research that furthers knowledge and addresses pressing policy problems. The premium given to publication in top journals leads to an emphasis on exhaustive treatment of narrow questions. Detailed, robustly identified studies of novel questions are of undeniable value; however, the opportunity cost of producing such studies is large in terms of research quantity and policy relevance. For economists who aim to achieve what we view as the ultimate goals of academic research (enhancing understanding of the world, solving social problems, and building foundational knowledge to enable future breakthroughs), we offer some insights from publication philosophy in the field of public health. We discuss how public health has developed norms around publishing that are more successful in meeting these ultimate goals. We then offer thoughts on potential lessons for young economists in China and the economics discipline.     

The relative quality of black economists

This paper identifies the top black economists and ranks them in terms of their quality. The measure used as the indicator of quality is the number of citations received by an individual economist. It is argued that citations represent influence in that they reflect the degree to which others have found that work to be useful in their research and are an indication of the amount of recognition an economist’s research has received. Using citation tabulations as the measure of quality, the rankings of the top twenty economists were calculated.     

The scholarly output of economists: A description of publishing patterns

This paper analyzes the research productivity of a cohort of economists over the 15 years following receipt of their doctorate degrees, contrasting their results in publishing articles, books, and textbooks after controlling for the individual characteristics of the economists in the sample. Specifically, this paper considers the quality of graduate school, the type of employment, the general area of dissertation research, and the gender of each individual in the cohort. Primary conclusions indicate that scholarly journals are the most important research outlet, and that book production is a complementary activity to output in scholarly journals. Moreover, publishing success is closely related to the quality of the graduate school attended as well as the type of employer. According to this research, women do not face a statistically significant disadvantage to publishing. Finally, the analysis documents that midway through the 15-year time span covered by this study, output begins to decline, reflecting the post-tenure drop-off in research productivity.     

The R-computing language: Potential for Asian economists

This paper reviews the open source R language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. The paper stresses the potential usefulness for Asian universities, researchers and organizations concerned with data analysis. We provide some practical guidelines and information on useful resources when working with R. We also include some examples to illustrate the scope of R as an object-oriented language and introduce the basic syntax.     

Fame and the fortune of academic economists: How the market rewards influential research in economics

We analyze the pay and position of 1009 faculty members who teach in doctoral‐granting economics departments at 53 large public universities in the United States. Using the Web of Science, we have identified the journal articles published by these scholars and the number of times each of these articles has been subsequently cited in published research articles. We find that research influence, as measured by various measures of total citations, is a remarkably strong predictor of the salary and the prestige of the department in which professors are employed. We also examine the effect of coauthorship. Surprisingly, we find no salary penalty for sharing authorship; however, in terms of prestige of employing department, coauthorship is fully discounted.     

美经济学家眼中的中国经济

美国怎样看待中国FDI、外汇储备等经济热点问题?中美之间的经济依存度是否会在将来让中国经济追随美国步入衰退?旅美经济学家温跃宽对美国经济学家们进行了走访     

2011诺贝尔经济学奖揭晓两美国经济学家获此殊荣

10月10日,瑞典皇家科学院诺贝尔奖评审委员会宣布,美国经济学家托马斯·萨金特（Thomas Sargent）与克里斯托弗·西姆斯教授（Christopher Sims）以他们对“宏观经济因果关系上的实验法研究”上所作的贡献,共同获得2011年度诺贝尔经济学奖。