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on Sociology of Economics |
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Issue of 2011‒05‒24
three papers chosen by Jonas Holmström Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration |
| By: | Radu Vranceanu (Economics Department - ESSEC Business School); Damien Besancenot (CEPN - Centre d'Economie de l'Université Paris Nord - Université Paris-Nord - Paris XIII - CNRS : UMR7234); Kim Huyn (LEM - Université Paris 2) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides a dynamic analysis of the market for academic publications. Given imperfect information about journalseditorial line, authors can sometimes target a wrong journal; in turn, the editor will desk-reject their paper. An equilibrium is de ned as a situation where both editors and authors implement their optimal publication strategies, given the matching technology and the prevailing surplus sharing rule. The model can be solved for the equilibrium submission fee, desk rejection rate and ratio between the number of editors and the number of authors. |
| Date: | 2011–04–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00592134&r=sog |
| By: | Pedro Albarrán; Juan A. Crespo; Ignacio Ortuño; Javier Ruiz-Castillo |
| Abstract: | This paper studies evidence from Thomson Scientific about the citation process of 3.7 million articles published in the period 1998-2002 in 219 Web of Science categories, or sub-fields. Reference and citation distributions have very different characteristics across sub-fields. However, when analyzed with the Characteristic Scores and Scales technique, which is replication and scale invariant, the shape of these distributions over three broad categories of articles appears strikingly similar. Reference distributions are mildly skewed, but citation distributions with a five-year citation window are highly skewed: the mean is twenty points above the median, while 9-10% of all articles in the upper tail account for about 44% of all citations. The aggregation of sub-fields into disciplines and fields according to several aggregation schemes preserve this feature of citation distributions. It should be noted that when we look into subsets of articles within the lower and upper tails of citation distributions the universality partially breaks down. On the other hand, for 140 of the 219 sub-fields the existence of a power law cannot be rejected. However, contrary to what is generally believed, at the sub-field level the scaling parameter is above 3.5 most of the time, and power laws are relatively small: on average, they represent 2% of all articles and account for 13.5% of all citations. The results of the aggregation into disciplines and fields reveal that power law algebra is a subtle phenomenon. |
| Date: | 2011–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:werepe:we1109&r=sog |
| By: | John P. Conley; Mario J. Crucini; Robert A. Driskill; Ali Sina Onder |
| Abstract: | We investigate how increases in publication delays have affected the life-cycle of publications of recent Ph.D. graduates in economics. We construct a panel dataset of 14,271 individuals who were awarded Ph.D.s between 1986 and 2000 in US and Canadian economics departments. For this population of scholars, we amass complete records of publications in peer reviewed journals listed in the JEL (a total of 368,672 observations). We find evidence of significantly diminished productivity in recent relative to earlier cohorts when productivity of an individual is measured by the number of AER equivalent publications. Diminished productivity is less evident when number of AER equivalent pages is used instead. Our findings are consistent with earlier empirical findings of increasing editorial delays, decreasing acceptance rates at journals, and a trend toward longer manuscripts. This decline in productivity is evident in both graduates of top thirty and non-top thirty ranked economics departments and may have important implications for what should constitute a tenurable record. We also find that the research rankings of the faculty do not line up with the research quality of their students in many cases. |
| JEL: | A11 J0 J11 J24 |
| Date: | 2011–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17043&r=sog |