Sebastian Galiani, Ugo Panizza 28 September 2020
https://voxeu.org/article/publishing-and-evaluating-success-economics-new-ebook
The publication process in economics is characterised by long publication lags and excessive weight given to a very small number of journals, while the profession itself is seen by many as hierarchical, clubby and characterised by gender and racial biases. This column introduces an eBook which takes stock of these issues with a series of short essays focusing on how economists publish their research and measure academic success. While there is much to be proud of about the state of the economics profession, the chapters in the eBook suggest there is still work to be done to make economics more open and inclusive and the publication process fairer and more efficient.
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The last chapter of Section 4 focuses on the geography of published economics research. Jishnu Das and Quy-Toan Do show that low-income countries are heavily under-represented in economic research and that there is a US bias in top economics journals – the probability of publication is much larger for papers on the US relative to other countries, and this pattern persists even after controlling for author ‘quality’. The authors conclude that the correlation between publication patterns and GDP per capita supports Bardhan’s (2003) concerns about a possible misallocation of talent across research institutions with limited incentives to focus on small and poor countries.