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on Sociology of Economics |
| By: | Orhan, Mehmet A. (EM Normandie Business School); van Rossenberg, Yvonne; Bal, P. Matthijs |
| Abstract: | Ideally, the academic publication process should be meritocratic, fair, and open to diverse groups of researchers. Yet, many scholarly disciplines are far from this ideal. To investigate the extent and nature of overrepresentation in management and organizational research, we examined 60-year publication trends in three closely related subfields: Management (MNGT), Human Resource Management (HRM), and Industrial-Organizational Psychology (IOP). Analyzing over 60, 000 publications from 42 top-tier journals, our study reveals an increasing trend in authorship inequalities and a growing dominance of the scientific elite. Individual-level analyses, along with journal and field-level comparisons, show that a select group of researchers has become more influential over time, leading to rising disparities in authorship. Field-level comparisons also show that the most productive IOP researchers publish significantly more articles than those in other fields. Besides rising numbers of publications, the super-elite of IOP are found to dominate more journals, as evidenced by a higher frequency of the same authors appearing on the top-10 most productive list in IOP than in the other two fields. Through network analyses, we revealed that IOP consistently shows a large giant component, indicating that a large portion of IOP authors is part of the “same connected network, ” reflecting a highly collaborative field where even smaller groups are connected to the broader network. We recommend future advancements in theory, practice, and policy to address these inequalities and promote a more inclusive and equitable research environment. |
| Date: | 2024–10–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:tzx92 |
| By: | W. Benedikt Schmal |
| Abstract: | I explore the concept of growth being rooted in the recombination of existing technology as an explanation for the remarkable growth witnessed during the Industrial Revolution as it was recently proposed by Koppl et al.(2023). I adapt their combinatorial growth theory to assess its applicability in generating academic knowledge within universities and research institutions, particularly in the field of economics. The central question is whether significant combinatorial growth can also be anticipated in academia. The current career structures discourage the recombination of ideas, theories, or methods, making it more advantageous for early career researchers to stick to the status quo. I employ machine-learning-based natural language analysis of the top 5 journals in economics. The analysis reveals limited correlations between topics over the past three decades, suggesting the presence of isolated topic islands rather than productive recombination. This confirms the theoretical considerations beforehand. Overall, the institutional order of academia makes combinatorial growth at the research frontier unlikely. |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2409.20282 |
| By: | Jaan Masso; Jaanika Meriküll; Liis Roosaar; Kärt Rõigas; Tiiu Paas |
| Abstract: | This paper focuses on two mechanisms that could explain the persistence of the gender pay gap – child penalty and bargaining. We concentrate on academia and use administrative data from the University of Tartu, the largest university in Estonia. The context of the academic sector allows us to control for worker productivity through indicators of research and teaching activities. Administrative data on academic staff from 2012 to 2021 has been linked with the population register and web-scraped data from SCOPUS. We follow the quasi-experimental approach proposed by Kleven et al. (2019a) to identify child penalty and derive outside option wages for all the detailed institutes to estimate the role of bargaining. Despite no penalty in hourly wages, the decrease in the working hours for mothers equals two years of full-time work spread over four years after childbirth. Compared to the penalty for the whole population, the child penalty in academia is shorter-lived, and no statistically significant effect on women's publications or citations was found. Men, in contrast, do not experience any penalties related to children. Women's worse bargaining skills seem to be an important factor behind the gender pay gap in academia, whereas the institute's higher outside option wage is related to relatively higher wages for men and is a less important factor for the wages of women. |
| Keywords: | Gender wage gap, child penalty, event study, bargaining, outside option, academic sector |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mtk:febawb:147 |
| By: | Davis, John B. (Department of Economics Marquette University; Department of Economics Marquette University) |
| Abstract: | This chapter discusses how philosophy could influence economists in the future. It emphasizes factors affecting economists’ willingness to incorporate philosophical ideas in economics, and distinguishes a weak case and a strong case for them doing so. Both are tied to behavioral welfare economics’ ‘reconciliation problem’ regarding the relationship between positive and normative economics. The weak case concerns the nature of individual identity in connection with how present bias and weakness of will potentially pit today’s and tomorrow’s selves against one another. The strong case concerns the normative scope of economic policy and expanding policy recommendation beyond its current welfare-only basis. The weak case imposes adjustment on positive economics; the strong case imposes it on normative economics. The paper closes with brief comments on how historically different sciences and fields draw on one another over time. |
| Keywords: | economics, philosophy, reconciliation problem, present bias, individual identity, justice, Rawls, institutions, interdisciplinarity |
| JEL: | A12 A33 B41 D03 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mrq:wpaper:2024-04 |