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The most cited economics articles in the last five years
The source is REPEC, here is the list. I believe if I were starting out today, I would end up as a law professor, not an economist, though perhaps I would do economics in a legal guise.
I might add that number of citations and influence are, in my view, diverging. Steve Levitt has had a huge influence on economics, an influence which is underrepresented in his number of citations. You won't cite him just because you've been inspired by the kind of paper he writes, and how many other economics papers are there on girls' names or soccer kicks? Furthermore the more that economic research fragments, and becomes less theoretical, the more that the most cited papers are likely to be macroeconomics, as this list illustrates. At least macro papers will still share a common topic.
Hat tip to Economic Logic.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 10, 2008 at 07:18 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Just a clarification. They are most cited by papers in the REPEC system which includes a lot of working papers. They are not necessarily the most cited by published papers. In other words, the SSCI might well give a different ranking.
Posted by: angus at Jan 10, 2008 10:24:14 AM
This is interesting, and may be a confirmation of the divergence between the most-cited and most-revolutionary work.
The question I'd like to see answered is whether there are other scientometric methods of detecting revolutionary science that would objectively pick-up and measure the influence of people like Steven Levitt. In his case, there was a best-selling book and the most-accessed economics blog.
But Stephen Dubner has to be credited as a vital intermediary - and most revolutionary scientists would not have such a collaborator; nor would most revolutionary science have the same general public appeal as Levitt's work.
Any other suggestions for how revolutionary science might be detected and measured?
Posted by: bruce.charlton@ncl.ac.uk at Jan 10, 2008 10:25:08 AM
Why law professor as opposed to econ professor - less dismal? More status? 3 years for law degree versus x yeas for PhD?
Lots more bright folks chasing law degrees at Harvard, seeking to be in top 10%, than seeking econ grad degrees (though law folks are probably less good with stats).
The law/econ prof is not such a novelty compared to the pure econ prof.
Hence a top law prof doing law and econ probably has not as much influence as a top econ prof doing econ.
Maybe easier to get tenure in the law/econ niche, but then we get no more than we "pay" for, generally speaking, yes?
Posted by: cfw at Jan 10, 2008 10:57:56 AM
What makes Steven Levitt's papers on girls' names or soccer kicks "economics" as opposed to sociology or anthropology? I haven't read the papers, but the book's description of them seemed no different in approach, than you'd find amongst those fields or historians or, now that you bring it up, in a lawyer's brief.
I am not being glib (maybe thick headed, though); our book club really did question what made those studies economics in particular as opposed to social sciency. (I hope the answer is not the use of statistics or regression analysis or something else that begs the question.)
Thanks in advanced for any considered reply. I'll report back to the club.
Posted by: guy in the veal calf office at Jan 10, 2008 12:53:45 PM
Are citation numbers truely indicative of quality?
Posted by: anon at Jan 10, 2008 1:15:02 PM
Is it of any interest to economists in general that Levitt's historic influence is based most of all on a paper whose celebrated conclusion that legalizing abortion lowered crime was based on two technical errors by Levitt?
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jan 10, 2008 3:36:54 PM
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Revealed preference indicates that
the work of guys like Levitt and Wolfers contribute little to the
advancement of economic science. Primarily Wolfers et al are publicists,
made famous largely from blogs or papers having little direct bearing on
economics (albeit ones that make good headlines). Moreover, their citation
records are - to put it as charitably as possible - absolutely pathetic.
Posted by: jim at Jan 10, 2008 4:10:36 PM
Tyler,
You still can become a law professor!
Posted by: anon2 at Jan 10, 2008 4:23:32 PM
Tyler,
You still can become a law professor!
Posted by: anon2 at Jan 10, 2008 4:25:10 PM
It is always interesting to keep track of these things, but as a journal editor
I keep track of these things. I find substantial divergences between the numbers
one gets from RePEC, actual citations as recorded by SSCI, and most downloaded
recent articles. It is the rare paper that scores high on all three.
In my own view influence is not measurable so much over the last two years (the
window for impact factor measurement) or even five years, but a longer time horizon.
And the measure is probably not just citations per se, but a broader measure nobody
does, citations plus citations of the papers that cited plus those citing those, and
so on. After all, Paul Samuelson rarely gets cited now. However, I would suggest
that he is the most influential living economist by a country mile. It is not an
accident that he received the second Nobel in econ ever awarded (and is now the senior
recipient in terms of time, and maybe also in age, still living). He virtually created
modern, standard neoclassical economics, almost single-handedly. But his influence is
so deep and profound that it has gone into the textbooks, and people do not even "waste"
their time citing his papers much of the time.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jan 10, 2008 4:39:42 PM
One also needs to consider the quality of a citation. Many citations are perfunctory at best. At least in economics people err on the side of not citing things. In business strategy and management you can get cited just because you talked about some concept the paper wants to use. It's almost like people are citing precedent.
Posted by: srp at Jan 11, 2008 4:13:54 AM
The list looks good to me, but then I am at #50 and so have some interest in the matter.
I was struck by the number of trade papers on the list given that trade is relatively out of fashion as a subject for graduate students to work on.
I am puzzled by the claim that Steve Levitt has been particularly influential in the profession. I know that the NYT published a piece that basically claimed he invented the idea of doing empirical work in micro, which is simply silly. Less silly is the idea that he helped promote a certain style of work; even there I think he merely exemplified and popularized a pre-existing fashion (which, judging by the job market the last couple of years, is now falling out of favor).
I think Steve's biggest influence, actually, has been to increase the number of economics majors and, not unrelatedly, the public perception of economists as cool and interesting.
On the matter of "is it economics" I like to define economics as that which economists do, so by my definition it is. But I suspect that my definition is a minority one within the profession. For example, some folks will bluntly say that "behavioral" economics is not economics and some would say that aspects of my own work are more statistics than economics.
Jeff
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