Events

Prof. Ivan Png
Distinguished Professor in Strategy & Policy, Economics
National University of Singapore

How does research in economics progress? Is the agenda directed by senior scholars at top universities or does it emerge organically from competition in the marketplace of ideas? Previous research showed that top-five journals were more likely to publish work of scholars connected with journal editors. Here, we examine one potential explanation – that editors were more likely to publish papers that were related to their own research. Using the Pachinko Allocation Method, we classify over 54,600 abstracts of articles published in the top-five journals, next-five (EER, EJ, IER, JEEA and REStat), or AEA and Econometric Society journals and all other articles published by their editors between 1986-2019 into 35 topics. The top-five published 62% more articles in editors’ own topics. The empirical relation might be due to editors attracting more submissions on their own topics (“editorial activism”) or editors favouring submissions on their own topics (“editorial favouritism”). Estimates so far rule out editorial activism.