We analyze Italy's recent research evaluation exercise (VTR) as a salient example in discussing some internationally relevant issues emerging from the evaluation of research in economics. We claim that evaluation and its criteria, together with its linkage to research institutions' financing, are likely to affect the direction of research in a problematic way. As the Italian case documents, it is specifically economists who adopt unorthodox paradigms or pursue less diffused topics of research that should be concerned about research evaluation and its criteria. After outlining the recent practice of economic research in Italy and highlighting the relevant scope for pluralism that traditionally characterizes it, we analyze the publications submitted for evaluation to the VTR. By comparing these publications to all the entries in the EconLit database authored by economists located in Italy, we find a risk that the adopted ranking criteria may lead to disregarding historical methods in favor of quantitative and econometric methods, and heterodox schools in favor of mainstream approaches. Finally, by summarizing the current debate in Italy, we claim that evaluation should not be refused by heterodox economists, but rather that a reflection on the criteria of evaluation should be put forward at an international level in order to establish fair competition among research paradigms, thus, preserving pluralism in the discipline. © 2010 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc

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JEL classification: C15, C23, C25, D81 Keywords: Panel Data, Unobserved heterogeneity, Choice under risk ABSTRACTExperimental economics focuses on eliciting preferences, studying individuals one at a time to take into account their heterogeneity. Experiments have the appealing property of collecting enough observations to perform such an analysis. In real word, and in natural experiments, individuals cannot be observed according to experimenters' needs.We propose a method that aggregates over individuals taking into account their heterogeneity. Using data from a natural experiment, we estimate three models of decision making under risk: Expected Utility, Rank-Dependent Expected Utility and Regret-Rejoice. Our results show that individual-wise analyses can be substituted by pooled approaches without losing information about individual heterogeneity. RISK ATTITUDE IN REAL DECISION PROBLEMSThis paper aims at providing new evidence on risk aversion, focussing on aggregation over individuals eliciting their heterogeneity. The relevance of this topic is twofold: from a theoretical point of view, by showing that differences among people significantly affect their decisions, we highlight the need for theoretical developments which can better account for diversity. From an applied viewpoint, the statistical significance of such individual factors allows for better estimates than the ones one obtains when disregarding this issue.In lab experiments, individuals are observed as many times as the experimenter needs.This has provided ground for a flourishing literature focussing on the analysis of choice rules estimated individual by individual. Such a kind of approach is nearly unfeasible when data stemming from natural experiments are used. However, natural experiments' datasets are very attractive for they have the benefit of salient incentives. Therefore, in order to study choice rules when the number of observations on each individual is exogenously determined, researchers need to pool individual data.Participants both in lab and natural experiments differ in crucial characteristics. In pooling their data, we cannot discard this fact. Using data from a natural experiment, namely a TV show, which involves players taking decisions between risky prospects with outcomes up to half-a-million euros, we estimate three models of decision making under risk: Expected Utility, Rank-Dependent Expected Utility and Regret-Rejoice. The characteristics of the game, which involves lotteries composed of small and very large prizes, allow us to investigate the performance of the Rank-Dependent Expected Utility 2 (RD) and Regret-Rejoice (RR) utility functionals 1 in addition to the standard Expected Utility (EU) functional.Our research is designed to capture nuances in players' behaviour neglected by the EU formulation. Specifically, with the introduction of a RD functional, we can take into account the fact that some players appear to overweight the extreme prizes of a lottery with respect to the others; while the RR functional allows us ...

Citation counts are increasingly used to create rankings of scholars or institutions: while social scientists are often skeptical of the resulting indexes, economists have mostly been supporters of this approach. Yet, citation metrics have raised two debates in the literature: empirical, regarding their technical use, and theoretical, regarding their meaning and, more generally, the meaning of “scientific quality.” I review this literature highlighting the consequences for the use of citations for research assessment. As an application, I further study the network of citations of publications indexed in Web of Science, authored by all Italian academic economists between 2011 and 2015. I find that the probability of a citation between any two authors depends on similarity in their methods and topics but also, significantly, on various measures of social community and even of ideological proximity. The influence of social relations does not cancel out in the aggregate, as total citations to an individual depend on their network centrality. In the case of economics, citations cannot be interpreted as unbiased proxies of scientific quality.