The Focus of Academic Economics: Before and after the Crisis

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractHas the global financial crisis of 2007ff had a visible impact on the economics profession? To answer this question we employ a bibliometric approach and compare the content and orientation of economic literature before and after the crisis with reference to two different samples: A large-scale sample consisting of more than 440,000 articles published between 1956 and 2016 and a smaller sample of 400 top-cited papers before and after the crisis. Our results suggest that -unlike the Great Depression of the 1930s -the current financial crisis did not lead to any major theoretical or methodological changes in contemporary economics, although the topic of financial instability received increased attention after the crisis.

Topics and Geographical Diffusion of Knowledge in Top Economic Journals

“…These trends confirm only partially the preexisting evidence. While corroborating the evidence on the growth of finance and economic development (Aigner et al ; Kelly and Bruestle ), we find that the importance of industrial organization decreases as in Angrist et al ().…”

Six Dimensions of Concentration in Economics: Evidence from a Large-Scale Data Set

“…After the financial crisis there are heterodox articles among the top 1 percent for the first time in decades. While this does suggest that the crisis did have an impact on academic economics, the results of Aigner et al (2018) indicate that this impact was rather temporary and did not entail a substantial paradigmatic shift.…”

“…After the financial crisis there are heterodox articles among the top 1 percent for the first time in decades. While this does suggest that the crisis did have an impact on academic economics, the results of Aigner et al (2018) indicate that this impact was rather temporary and did not entail a substantial paradigmatic shift.Despite the growth of the discipline, the influence of a fixed number of top journals and institutions remains remarkably stable. The number of journals in the data set increased from 35 in 1956 to 384 in 2016.…”

“…2009, 2013). However, Aigner et al (2018) suggest that while the financial crisis caused a temporary increase of interest in classic contributions dealing with financial and economic instability, this was less pronounced in the “Top Five” journals and did not have much impact on the paradigmatic development of contemporary economics.…”

Investing in mutual funds: are you paying for performance or for the ties of the manager?

“…This trend invigorates the need of investors to use mutual funds for diversification and risk-management purposes. In fact, empirical evidence after the financial crisis of 2007-2008 suggests that the crisis had a noticeable impact on the volatility and liquidity of the markets and led to a new interest in questions of economic instability (Aigner et al 2018). Thus, the large academic literature and professional advises on mutual fund performance is not surprising (Papadamou and Siriopoulos 2004, Koulis et al 2011, Das and Rao 2013, Kenchington et al 2019 The analysis of the fund performance is very important for professional analysts and portfolio managers, as well as for finance researchers and regulators.…”