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North American Economists Are Losing Market Share

A new research paper shows that North American economists have lost a lot of market share in research publication to the rest of the world — but mainly to European economists. (Please do note: the paper is a product of IZA, or the Institute for the Study of Labor, located in Bonn.) Researchers Ana Rute Cardoso, Paulo Guimarães, and Klaus F. Zimmermann used data from Econlit (the American Economic Association’s electronic bibliography) and the Social Science Citation Index to compile a set of 100,404 articles across 170 journals to determine where economic research papers were coming from between 1991 and 2006. In that period, they found that North American economists had dropped from producing 66 percent of all econ articles to 45 percent. European economists, on the other hand, rose from 24 percent to 40 percent. Asian economists, small players, tripled their 3 percent to 9 percent. The researchers concluded that while the majority of “influential research” is still coming from North America, international collaborative efforts between European economists are bumping up their numbers in top journals. (HT: Worthwhile Canadian Initiative) [%comments]


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