What Do We Know about Ourselves? on the Economics of Economics

Abstract

Depuis un certain temps, les économistes ont pris conscience du fait que leur propre comportement générait des questions appelant une réponse. Pourquoi, par exemple, les économistes utilisent-ils l'ordre alphabétique des noms lorsqu'ils écrivent un article en collaboration? Par ailleurs, qu'est-ce qui détermine le succès d'un économiste du secteur académique? Ou bien, en quoi étudier l'économie affecte-t-il le comportement? En même temps, les économistes ont également remarqué que la profession générait des données susceptibles d'être utilisées en vue de tester des idées théoriques proposées par les économistes. Dans cet article, l'auteur analyse les travaux de recherche dont l'objet d'étude n'est autre que les économistes. Il s'intéresse en particulier à la formation des économistes, à leurs habitudes en matière de publication ainsi qu'à leur marché du travail. Copyright WWZ and Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag AG 2004.

Citation Success: Evidence from Economic History Journal Publications

“…In both cases, therefore, the relationship is non-linear, and thus the positive impact of article length and number of co-authors only holds true up to a point. These findings are consistent with earlier findings, such as Robert Whaples' analysis of articles published in the Journal of Economic History (Whaples, 2002) as well as studies made in the entire field of economics (Coupé, 2004).…”

“…13 Due to its outlier status, this observation is controlled for by means of a dummy variable in the empirical analysis. 14 For example, Coupé (2004) shows that after 1995 about 45% of economics articles (cited and un-cited) were co-authored, whereas in our sample of cited articles published in 1995 or later only a third was co-authored. 15 In our sample, Australia has ten authors (3%), Israel and India four authors each (2.4%), Japan three (1%), while Mexico and Turkey have one each.…”

“…whether the authors come from economics, economic history, or history departments. By comparison with (other) economist researchers, this suggests that co-authorship is relatively uncommon among those who publish their work in economic history journals (Johnson, 1997;Coupé, 2004). …”

Citation success: Evidence from economic history journal publications

“…These numbers do not seem to vary after controlling for departmental affiliation (whether authors come from economics, economic history, or history departments). The shares observed in our data are almost identical to those found for economics articles (Johnson, 1997;Coupé, 2004). The average length of articles is 25 pages, with a standard deviation of 8 pages.…”

“…Table 1 reveals that this number is also within one standard deviation away from the mean. As has been widely discussed concerning other disciplines (Coupé, 2004), it is not clear why more authors would give rise to more citations, especially compared to singleauthored articles. Popular explanations point to the articles' higher quality stems from both more expert input into the article and more discussions taking place among coauthors while conducting the work.…”