Journal of Economic Literature
ISSN 0022-0515 (Print) | ISSN 2328-8175 (Online)
Six Decades of Top Economics Publishing: Who and How?
Journal of Economic Literature
(pp. 162–72)
See new supplemental update: The Demographic and Research Styles of Economics Writing: 2025 Update to "Six Decades of Top Economics Publishing: Who and How?," Published in the Journal of Economic Literature 51 (1)
Abstract
Presenting data on all full-length articles in the three top general economics journals for one year in each decade 1960s-2010s, I analyze changes in patterns of coauthorship, age structure and methodology, and their possible causes. The distribution of number of authors has shifted steadily rightward. In the last two decades, the fraction of older authors has almost quadrupled. Top journals are publishing many fewer papers that represent pure theory, regardless of subfield, somewhat less empirical work based on publicly available data sets, and many more empirical studies based on data collected by the author(s) or on laboratory or field experiments. (JEL A14)Citation
Hamermesh, Daniel S. 2013. "Six Decades of Top Economics Publishing: Who and How?" Journal of Economic Literature 51 (1): 162–72. DOI: 10.1257/jel.51.1.162Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- A14 Sociology of Economics