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The citation death tax
Dying is not always good for your citations:
The information content of academic citations is subject to debate. This paper views premature death as a tragic "natural experiment," outlining a methodology identifying the "citation death tax" -- the impact of death of productive economists on the patterns of their citations. We rely on a sample of 428 papers written by 16 well known economists who died well before retirement, during the period of 1975-97. The news is mixed: for half of the sample, we identify a large and significant "citation death tax" for the average paper written by these scholars. For these authors, the estimated average missing citations per paper attributed to premature death ranges from 40% to 140% (the overall average is about 90%), and the annual costs of lost citations per paper are in the range 3% and 14%. Hence, a paper written ten years before the author’s death avoids a citation cost that varies between 30% and 140%. For the other half of the sample, there is no citation death tax; and for two Nobel Prize-caliber scholars in this second group, Black and Tversky, citations took off overtime, reflecting the growing recognitions of their seminal works.
Here is the paper. As I interpret it, some people are trading (usually barter) for many of their citations and death hinders those trades. These people are overrated to begin with. Black and Tversky, on the other hand, are still underrated. Bet on those scholars whose citations rise with their deaths.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 24, 2008 at 01:39 PM in Education | Permalink
Comments
A contributing factor may be that premature death (what the heck is "mature" death anyway?) prevents authors from developing their ideas fully through a series of papers, thereby lowering the overall impact of their body of work and reducing the number of cites their already written papers receive.
I am a little hesitant to attribute a big effect to citation trading, I suspect the effect would be way too small to affect cite counts much for really well-known economists. I haven't read the paper yet, though, so I am not really sure how large the magnitudes would have to be.
Posted by: Commenterlein at Mar 24, 2008 1:59:41 PM
As an editor, I would say that "citation trading" is a real phenomenon.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Mar 24, 2008 2:13:44 PM
Although citation trading no doubt exists, other things also contribute to professional presence. It's probably unfair to some people whose professional presence boosts their citations to call them "overrated". Their work might simply be better known because they have made more contributions to the profession as discussants, mentors, etc.
Posted by: Some Random Economist at Mar 24, 2008 2:29:51 PM
Barkley,
No doubt it exists, and at the level of citation counts most of us (certainly myself) exist it probably has a sizable effect. But when you look at the cite counts of the really well-known folks (who are running up many hundred cites per paper), I just don't see how citation trading can have much of an impact. Said differently, even if someone like Shleifer got five citations per paper through trading, that wouldn't make a difference at all for him.
Posted by: Commenterlein at Mar 24, 2008 2:40:09 PM
Not to mention that people presumably get lot of (not necessarily traded) citations by doing personal promotion of their ideas, in the form of talks. Also, people can get citations by having students, who then do work building on their older work. Both of these don't work well for the dead.
Posted by: Ben at Mar 24, 2008 2:51:21 PM
Is there such a thing as an economist so nasty that people would want to deny him the pleasure of a citation, a motivation that vanishes on his death?
Posted by: dearieme at Mar 24, 2008 2:51:50 PM
Aspiring poets who sincerely want to be famous have been receiving a standard piece of advice for nearly two centuries: "Die young." Clearly, aspiring economists need other guidance: "Trade early and trade often." perhaps? It seems a pity if we can only offer them a barter market in which to do so.
Posted by: David Heigham at Mar 24, 2008 2:57:45 PM
Tyler,
Your interpretation "As I interpret it, some people are trading (usually barter) for many of their citations and death hinders those trades," is in contrast to the conclusions of the paper which explicitly indicate that it might be one of two possibilities: 1) the one you interpret; or 2) a "networking" effect that is dependent upon the author being on the hoof rather than the hook.
Posted by: indiana jim at Mar 24, 2008 4:25:59 PM
This seems pretty simple to me -- if you are dead, you cannot go to conferences, nor email back and forth with other researchers, and therefore you cannot promote your work into other people's attention. But if you're famous, and you die, that makes you more famous, and people think about your work more.
Posted by: Alan at Mar 24, 2008 5:18:14 PM
There is a very unsavory possibility that has been ignored: the failure to cite a paper may be intentional for the purpose of someone still alive claiming credit as the innovator of a particular idea.
I would think that it would be less likely to find this in a 1975 to present sample as opposed to a 1900 to present sample. Prior to computer accessible databases it was also more likely to have honest oversights of already discovered ideas; this would obviously make identification of "intentional oversight" somewhat problematic.
Posted by: indiana jim at Mar 24, 2008 5:44:52 PM
I would agree that there are other aspects of being alive that can help one get cited besides citation
trading, some of them benign. Thus, being able to defend one's turf, going to conferences, having
students who will cite one more, and simply publishing, which brings ongoing attention to one's work.
I would also agree that those whose citation rates go up with death, probably deserve the increased rate.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Mar 24, 2008 5:57:40 PM
I agree with you Barkley.
Still, what piques my interest is what is most difficult to tease out, namely the non-benign. In particular, it may be that some of those whose citation rates fall say 10 or 20 years after their death may not at all deserve the decline.
Posted by: indiana jim at Mar 24, 2008 6:15:04 PM
Yet another aspect that has not been mentioned is self-citation; obviously these stop with one's death.
Posted by: indiana jim at Mar 24, 2008 9:19:58 PM
indiana jim: all work in bibliometrics knows how to remove self-citations. If imperialist economists don't know to do this, they have no business writing papers that colonise existing fields like that. I haven't read the paper yet because I'm at home and have a low enough rate of time preference that I can wait an hour to avoid paying five bucks, but I'll be interested to see if the authors cite any actual bibliometricians rather than just the clique of economists who pretend to the field. Real bibliometricians also do work on identifying citation trading, using network analysis, I believe.
Another very interesting possibility: do economists practice citation trading more than researchers in other disciplines (esp other social scientists)? Which discipline is the more ethical, economics or sociology? I ask this as an economist; the data are all there.
Posted by: cb at Mar 25, 2008 2:45:07 AM
What about the price of art? Same result?
Posted by: tollison at Mar 25, 2008 7:00:05 AM
cb,
No doubt a "real bibliometrician" might be able to offer some useful tips to economists about how to investigate a variety of issues about the economics literature. But its is economists (imperialist or otherwise) who will likely provide the most innovative and fundamental new insights about the inner workings of their literature. Thanks for your post from this economist who will continue to make it his business to poke around in the literature of his field however naively, your suggestion notwithstanding. Why do you think God invented the learning curve?
Posted by: indiana jim at Mar 25, 2008 3:44:57 PM
self-citations perhaps?
Posted by: A Student at Mar 26, 2008 1:13:11 AM
Posted by: china at Mar 31, 2008 9:39:38 AM
