The Interdisciplinarity of Economics

Truc, Alexandre

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3669335

Cited by 20 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…This last finding is in line with what previous studies have shown about the 'insularity' of economics and business scholarship (Truc et al, 2020).…”

Section: The Openness Of Disciplinessupporting

confidence: 93%

Subject specialties as interdisciplinary trading grounds: the case of the social sciences and humanities

2022

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In this study we explore the disciplinary diversity present within subject specialties in the social sciences and humanities. Subject specialties are operationalized as textually coherent clusters of documents. We apply topic modelling to textual information on the individual document level (titles and abstracts) to cluster a multilingual set of roughly 45,000 documents into subject specialties. The dataset includes the metadata of journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and monographs. We make use of two indicators, namely, the organizational affiliation based on the departmental address of the authors and the cognitive orientation based on the disciplinary classifications at the publication level. First, we study the disciplinary diversity of the clusters by calculating a Hill-type diversity index. We draw an overall picture of the distribution of subject specialties over diversity scores and contrast the two indicators with each other. The goal is to discover whether some subject specialties are inherently multi-or interdisciplinary in nature, and whether the different indicators are telling a well-aligned, similar story. Second, for each cluster of documents we calculate the dominance, i.e. the relative size of the largest discipline. This proxy of disciplinary concentration gives an idea of the extent to which a specialty is disciplined. The results show that all subject specialties analyzed serve as interdisciplinary trading grounds, with outliers in both directions of the disciplinary-interdisciplinary continuum. For a large share of specialties, the dominant cognitive and organizational disciplinary classification were found to be well aligned. We present a typology of subject specialties by contrasting the organizational and cognitive diversity scores.

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“…This last finding is in line with what previous studies have shown about the 'insularity' of economics and business scholarship (Truc et al, 2020).…”

Section: The Openness Of Disciplinessupporting

confidence: 93%

Subject specialties as interdisciplinary trading grounds: the case of the social sciences and humanities

2022

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“…Combined together, these two sources of knowledge represent most of all ideas, concepts, and empirical findings circulating within the medical education field, leaving only 20% to other academic domains (e.g., education, higher education, sociology, psychology). These trends contrast with the field of higher education and with recent bibliometric studies showing that disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, and political sciences display an external citation rate averaging between 50% and 60% [1].…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 71%

“…A growing number of researchers have been studying interdisciplinary knowledge flow in recent decades [1][2][3][4], contributing to the debate around the volume of knowledge exported from, and imported by disciplines. In contrast to the common belief according to which disciplines are silos [5,6], these researchers [1][2][3][4] offer a more nuanced perspective. While some disciplines, such as economics, are relatively insular, others, such as demography and geography, are largely open to external knowledge [1].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast to the common belief according to which disciplines are silos [5,6], these researchers [1][2][3][4] offer a more nuanced perspective. While some disciplines, such as economics, are relatively insular, others, such as demography and geography, are largely open to external knowledge [1]. We contribute to this literature by focusing on medical education research.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Barriers to cross-disciplinary knowledge flow: The case of medical education research

et al. 2021

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Introduction The medical education research field operates at the crossroads of two distinct academic worlds: higher education and medicine. As such, this field provides a unique opportunity to explore new forms of cross-disciplinary knowledge exchange. Methods Cross-disciplinary knowledge flow in medical education research was examined by looking at citation patterns in the five journals with the highest impact factor in 2017. To grasp the specificities of the knowledge flow in medical education, the field of higher education was used as a comparator. In total, 2031 citations from 64 medical education and 41 higher education articles published in 2017 were examined. Results Medical education researchers draw on a narrower range of knowledge communities than their peers in higher education. Medical education researchers predominantly cite articles published in health and medical education journals (80% of all citations), and to a lesser extent, articles published in education and social science journals. In higher education, while the largest share of the cited literature is internal to the domain (36%), researchers cite literature from across the social science spectrum. Findings suggest that higher education scholars engage in conversations with academics from a broader range of communities and perspectives than their medical education colleagues. Discussion Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of doxa and field, it is argued that the variety of epistemic cultures entering the higher education research space contributes to its interdisciplinary nature. Conversely, the existence of a relatively homogeneous epistemic culture in medicine potentially impedes cross-disciplinary knowledge exchange.

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“…They also find that although the extramural influence of economics (measured by the share of papers in economics cited by other disciplines) is growing, it is relatively small with less than 1% share in citations to papers in economics by major multidisciplinary science journals. Similarly, Truc et al (2020) note the absence of contribution of the most influential journals in economics to the recent efforts to increase the interdisciplinarity of the discipline.…”

Section: Trends and Differences In Interdisciplinary Research Across ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Breakthroughs at the disciplinary nexus: Rewards and challenges for applied economists

Khanna

2022

American J Agri Economics

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Complex societal challenges call for solutions that require innovative thinking and new ways of problem-solving that creatively combine knowledge from multiple disciplines. It is imperative that applied economists engage in interdisciplinary research and apply systems thinking and analytical approaches to analyzing trade-offs and behavioral drivers of human choices to design strategies to achieve societal goals. Agricultural and applied economics have a foundation in interdisciplinary research, real-world problem solving and engagement with stakeholders, but face increasing pressures for specialization. This address discusses strategies for conducting interdisciplinary research that rely on T-shaped research skills, team science and aggregating expertise from different disciplines to codevelop solutions to challenging societal problems. It provides some examples of ground-breaking research that has emerged in applied economics due to the collaborations with and insights provided by scholars from other disciplines. The paper concludes with a discussion of the institutional and discipline-related challenges to conducting interdisciplinary research and a call to the profession to foster, recognize and value interdisciplinary research.

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The Interdisciplinarity of Economics

Cited by 20 publications

References 36 publications

Subject specialties as interdisciplinary trading grounds: the case of the social sciences and humanities

Subject specialties as interdisciplinary trading grounds: the case of the social sciences and humanities

Barriers to cross-disciplinary knowledge flow: The case of medical education research

Breakthroughs at the disciplinary nexus: Rewards and challenges for applied economists

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