Recent trends in co-authorship in economics: evidence from RePEc

This article investigates the recent trends in co-authorship in economics. Using data from more than 700 000 journal articles we show that the average number of authors per article has increased over the last years. This process is likely to be continued in the future. In a regression analysis, we present evidence how the authorship of papers is related to the number of citations, the JEL classification, the number of journal pages and the length of the title.     

Determinants of international university rankings scores

This article analyses the relationship between a university’s score in international university rankings, its expenditure per student and other factors such as university mission, size and productive inefficiency. We develop an economic model of rankings and universities and estimate this model with data on universities classified in the top 200 by the Times Higher Education Supplement ranking of 2007. We find that the elasticity of a university’s ranking score for the expenditure per student is between 4% and 9%, and that there are no clear signs of inefficiency in production among the top 200 universities. University mission and size are also significant predictors of ranking score. These results are especially interesting given the relevance attributed to rankings by government officials, university directors and students.     

The role of conference externalities and other factors in determining the annual recruiting rankings of football bowl subdivision (FBS) teams

In this article, we analyse the impact of school, head coach and conference characteristics on a college football team’s annual recruiting ranking. Utilizing panel data collected from various sources covering 2002–2014, we find that measures of recent school success such as having winning seasons and finishing seasons ranked in the Associated Press (AP) top 25 poll have a positive impact on a team’s recruiting ranking. Similarly, schools with more successful head coaches tend to earn better recruiting classes, while schools facing bowl bans, scholarship restrictions and probation tend to earn worse recruiting classes. Various measures of conference achievement indicate that conference externalities in recruiting may indeed be positive as is often suggested; however, there is much potential for a negative externality as well.     

Simple measures of endogenous free-riding in protectionist lobbies

Even though there is a well-known empirical and theoretical link between lobby and the free-rider problem, the existing literature only attributes its findings to the free-rider rather than the measurement of its extent. We develop broader theoretical micro-foundations for measuring free-riding and investigate the determinants of tariff rates from the perspective of corporate lobbying and free-riding. Our estimation result shows that the degree of free-riding not only varies across industries but is particularly high in larger industries indicating the underutilization of lobbying. The tariff rates under monopoly are about 8 times higher than under perfect competition in most industries suggesting that stakeholders should maintain higher industry protection levels through lobbying.     

Consistency in performance rankings: the Peru water sector

Regulators can utilize a number of alternative methodologies for comparing firm efficiency, but these approaches need to be robust to be accepted by stakeholders. This study evaluates the consistency of water-utility performance rankings for Peruvian water utilities. The results indicate that data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) yield similar rankings in this case. In addition, the techniques have comparable success for identifying the best and worst performing utilities. However, these rankings based on sophisticated statistical techniques are not highly correlated with those developed by the Peruvian water regulator (SUNASS). This result does not invalidate the performance rankings obtained by the regulator, since those rankings are based on more dimensions of utility performance. However, they illustrate the importance of developing sound techniques for identifying weak utilities. Improvements in sector performance require that benchmarking be given greater attention than in the past.     

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.     

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.     

Fundraising under two-dimensional asymmetric information: the case of mindless donations

The paper develops a model of charity’s choice of fundraising method under two dimensions of asymmetric information, quality and purpose. The main implication from this model is a separating equilibrium where the higher-quality charity uses a traditional fundraising method, while the lower-quality one exploits a low-stakes, take-it- or leave-it, ‘mindless’ method. Empirical results support the hypothesis that charities of lower quality are more likely to adopt the mindless fundraising method. Even so, consumers still choose to give in the equilibrium, due to the small requested amount of mindless donations, which disincentivizes serious thinking by consumers. The mindless method, along with purpose uncertainty, has the potential to alleviate the free-riding problem that is characteristic of public good provision and is, therefore, welfare improving.     

The Siting of Hazardous Waste Facilities in Federal Systems: The Political Economy of NIMBY

This paper offers a new political economy explanation for thepervasive problem of siting hazardous waste treatment facilitiesin federal system. We first show that a decentralized systemyields the first-best waste treatment capacity level and that acentralized structure gives rise to free-riding behavior amonglocal jurisdictions. In our model, each community seeks toinfluence the central government through political contributions.This leads to suboptimal levels of treatment capacity. Thecapacity is increasing in the compensation level if the marginalbenefit of treatment capacity is sufficiently large, and in thegovernment's weight on aggregate social welfare relative tolobbying activities. The centralized system can replicate thedecentralized system with a sufficiently high compensation level.Since compensation has proved difficult, a centralized systemfaces greater obstacles than a decentralized system.     

Publishing performance in economics: Spanish rankings (1990–1999)

Abstract. This paper contributes to the growing literature that analyses the Spanish publishing performance in Economics throughout the 1990s. Several bibliometric indicators are used in order to provide Spanish rankings (of both institutions and individual authors) based on Econlit journals. Further, lists of the ten most influential authors and articles over that period, in terms of citations, are reported. We are grateful to many colleagues who made very useful remarks to preliminary versions of this paper, as well as to two anonymous referees. We are particularly indebted to Xavier Sala-i-Martín, without whose invaluable help this work would not have been possible. All errors or omissions are of our exclusive responsibility.     

Publication Performance of Economists and Economics Departments in Turkey (1999–2003)

This is the first study evaluating the publication performances of economists and economics departments in Turkey. The international (article) publication performance of Turkish economic departments in general is found to be rather poor. There is a wide gap in particular between the top five universities and the economists affiliated to them and those outside the top five. The paper also provides evidence in favour of private higher education. The publication patterns of economists in Turkey are shown to be similar to those of their counterparts in the rest of the world.     

人民币升值对中国和世界经济影响分析

针对目前国内外学术界、政界和媒体争论较多的“人民币升值论”，本文在深入评析人民币出现升值压力原因的基础上，从正反两方面探讨人民币升值对中国经济的影响，并进一步阐述了对世界，特别是美国、日本和亚洲经济的负面影响，为今后人民币汇率体制改革提出了合理的建议。     

An economic theory of altruism based on rankings in a stable social hierarchy

In order to fully understand the interaction between selfish and non-selfish actors, social scientists need rigorous formal models of other-regarding preferences. While the current models clearly present progress relative to the self-interest approach, the evidence also makes it clear that further theoretical progress is warranted. There is ample opportunity for improving our understanding of other-regarding behavior. This paper develops a theory of economic altruism entirely compatible with self-interest utility maximization by rational individuals. Sympathy arises when someone is interested in improving somebody else’s condition, and this will also enhance the utility of the one who acts. Construed in that way, sympathetic behavior is essentially self-interested behavior. A question addressed in this paper is whether a sympathetic population of individuals will exert their income-producing labor differently than a population of egoistic individuals. Two parameters suffice to characterize the altruistic conduct of an individual: a parameter governing the individual’s ranking in a social hierarchy and a parameter determining the sensitivity of an individual’s sympathy for others at different social ranks. The main testable implication of the theory is that in a large population, where each individual has a concave utility function embodying sympathy, the altruistic behavior of any specific individual is determined by his rank in the social hierarchy. A second implication is that in a horizontal social hierarchy, the most altruistic people in the population are those in the middle of it.     

The ADVIAN classification — A new classification approach for the rating of impact factors

A new classification scheme for the impact analysis based on an impact matrix is presented. In contrast to the state-of-the-art methods the impact factors of a social system are not grouped into 4 or 5 groups but ranked according to different criteria. The criteria include for instance the driving impact factors as keys for improvements to the system and the driven impact factors that may be indicators for the improvement success. The ranking for each criterion is on a scale from 0 to 100, independent of the number of impact factors.     

The effect of rural labor migration on poverty alleviation: a village-level study in China

The construction of the new socialist countryside is being carried out in China nowadays. Although lots of successful experience has been gotten, different problems occur in various regions yet. To analyze the relationships among rural labor migration, poverty alleviation and characteristics of migrants is important in considering the effect of rural labor migration on the construction of the new socialist countryside. Available sampling and typical case study are adopted and 236 questionnaires are collected from[bur villages in northwest GuangxL China, Daxin Lixin, Longhe and Yongchang. We analyze the rural labor migration status, characteristics of migrants, remittance situation and income, household income and the ratio of remittance income to total household income. A bout 2/3 of the households have migrants in surveyed villages. And nearly half of the migration households have only one fam- ily member as migrants in the four villages. The migrants mainly comprise male and the younger, with the education level of junior middte school and higher More than half of the migrants are employed in Guangdong Province. But the characteristics of migrants in Yongchang are more diverse. The rural labor migration in the village is extremely active and extensive. And over 60% of the household with family members as migrants have remittance income. The rate in Yongchang is extremely high (80%). And the income of households with migrants getting remittance income significantly higher than their counterparts. More than half of their income comes from remittance as far as the former kind of household is concerned And in Yongchang, the rate is nearly 80%. The conclusion is that rural labor migration is popular and extensive in lots of villages. And the migration and remittance play an important role in rural household income, especially in some poor villages. For this kind of village, the rural labor migration may be some compulsory course in rural development. And the rural labor emigration is an essential way in poverty al-leviation. This is the first step in the construction of the new socialist countryside.     

居民消费需求影响因素分析

居民消费不足一直是困扰中国经济可持续发展的难题,本文采用排序选择模型分析方法,研究了影响居民消费需求的因素。得出的主要结论有:收入水平、子女教育状况、家庭人口规模是影响居民消费意愿的最主要因素;户主工作单位性质、受教育水平也影响消费意愿,由于居民消费观念保守,信用卡对居民消费意愿的提升没有明显的推动作用。本文还研究了居民储蓄的主要目的。根据这些结论提出了一系列针对性的措施。     

荷兰科技发展的现状及特点

荷兰是一个迅速向知识型转化的社会,贸易和创新是其发展的主要动力。为顺应国家发展趋势,荷兰政府将科技政策的重点放在营造优越的研究环境,吸引和培养杰出人才,从事开拓性的研究。同时,重视通过国际合作有效利用对象国和地区的科技资源,以不断增强自身优势和特色。     

从战略高度谈东北大开发

东北地区作为中国重要的工业基地,中国经济持续发展的重要增长极,区域经济合作最具活力的地区和参与东北亚区域合作的先导板块,在中国未来经济发展中将占有至关重要的地位。因此,实施东北大开发是新世纪中国全面建设小康社会的必然选择。新世纪的东北大开发应以存量资产开发、技术资源开发和人力资源开发为重点,通过政府引导、区域合作、结构调整、外向型经济发展等措施的实施,推动地区经济的根本转变,全面振兴东北经济,用大开发促进大发展。     

Sensitivity analysis of efficiency rankings to distributional assumptions: applications to Japanese water utilities

This article examines the robustness of efficiency score rankings across four distributional assumptions for trans-log stochastic production-frontier models, using data from 1221 Japanese water utilities (for 2004 and 2005). One-sided error terms considered include the half-normal, truncated normal, exponential and gamma distributions. Results are compared for homoscedastic and doubly heteroscedastic models, where we also introduce a doubly heteroscedastic variable mean model, and examine the sensitivity of the nested models to a stronger heteroscedasticity correction for the one-sided error component. The results support three conclusions regarding the sensitivity of efficiency rankings to distributional assumptions. When four standard distributional assumptions are applied to a homoscedastic stochastic frontier model, the efficiency rankings are quite consistent. When those assumptions are applied to a doubly heteroscedastic stochastic frontier model, the efficiency rankings are consistent when proper and sufficient arguments for the variance functions are included in the model. When a more general model, like a variable mean model is estimated, efficiency rankings are quite sensitive to heteroscedasticity correction schemes.     

Research Productivity in Business Economics: An Investigation of Austrian,German and Swiss Universities

Abstract. We draw on a new and comprehensive dataset that collects the research output of business economists employed by Austrian, German and Swiss universities. We compute research rankings of departments and identify the leading departments in selected subdisciplines. Moreover, we investigate how institutional design and individual characteristics affect research productivity and draw some conclusions for the training of junior scientists.