When does centrality matter? Scientific productivity and the moderating role of research specialization and cross-community ties

The present study addresses the ongoing debate concerning academic scientific productivity. Specifically, given the increasing number of collaborations in academia and the crucial role networks play in knowledge creation, we investigate the extent to which building social capital within the academic community represents a valuable resource for a scientist's knowledge-creation process. We measure the social capital in terms of structural position within the academic collaborative network. Furthermore, we analyse the extent to which an academic scientist's research specialization and ties that cross-community boundaries act as moderators of the aforementioned relationship. Empirical results derived from an analysis of an Italian academic community from 2001 to 2008 suggest academic scientists that build social capital by occupying central positions in the community outperform their more isolated colleagues. However, scientific productivity declines beyond a certain threshold value of centrality, hence revealing the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship. This relationship is negatively moderated by the extent to which an academic focuses research activities in few scientific knowledge domains, whereas it is positively moderated by the number of cross-community ties established

(WP 2018-05) Specialization, Fragmentation, and Pluralism in Economics

This paper investigates whether specialization in research is causing economics to become an increasingly fragmented and diverse discipline with a continually rising number of niche-based research programs and a declining role for dominant cross-science research programs. It opens by framing the issue in terms of centrifugal and centripetal forces operating on research in economics, and then distinguishes descriptive from normative pluralism. It reviews recent research regarding the JEL code and the economics’ J. B. Clark Award that points towards rising specialization and fragmentation of research in economics. It then reviews five related arguments that might explain increasing specialization and fragmentation in economics: (i) Smith’s early division of labor view, (ii) Kuhn’s later thinking about the importance of specialization, (iii) Heiner’s behavioral burden of knowledge argument, (iv) Ross innovation-diffusion analysis and Arthur’s theory of technological change as determinants of specialization in science, and (v) the effects of space and culture or internationalization on innovation appropriation. The paper then discusses what descriptive pluralism implies about normative pluralism, and makes a case for multidisciplinarity over interdisciplinarity as a basis for arguments promoting pluralism. The paper closes with brief comments on the issue of specialization and pluralism in the wider world outside economics and science

The New Crafts: On the Technization of the Workforce and the Occupationalization of Firms

[Excerpt] In the late 1960s and early 1970s American students were told that the value of a college education was declining (see Freeman 1976). Although liberal arts students were particularly discouraged by reports of recent graduates driving taxicabs, even the demand for engineers and other technical specialists seemed bleak. Two decades later, the headlines have reversed. Study after study proclaims that American children are performing more poorly on achievement tests than the children of most other industrialized nations. Employers complain of a shortage of skilled workers: young people are said to be ill-prepared for the demands of the workplace and older workers are said to lack the educational background requisite for retraining (Johnson and Packer 1987). Studies by labor economists have largely confirmed the employers\u27 contentions and foretell of even greater shortages of skilled labor in the near future (Bishop and Carter 1991)

3. Sociology

Sociology is one of the sciences of human behavior that has grown out of Enlightenment thought. In its present method and theory there is substantially nothing that was not anticipated by gifted seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century thinkers and their intellectual offspring in the Enlightenment tradition. From particular aspects of the grand theoretical syntheses that were characteristic of these centuries, a process of refinement and specialization has produced the sociology of the present day. [excerpt

Authorship analysis of specialized vs diversified research output

The present work investigates the relations between amplitude and type of collaboration (intramural, extramural domestic or international) and output of specialized versus diversified research. By specialized or diversified research, we mean within or beyond the author's dominant research topic. The field of observation is the scientific production over five years from about 23,500 academics. The analyses are conducted at the aggregate and disciplinary level. The results lead to the conclusion that in general, the output of diversified research is no more frequently the fruit of collaboration than is specialized research. At the level of the particular collaboration types, international collaborations weakly underlie the specialized kind of research output; on the contrary, extramural domestic and intramural collaborations are weakly associated with diversified research. While the weakness of association remains, exceptions are observed at the level of the individual disciplines

Firm formation and regional spillovers: evidence from Germany

This paper studies the effect of regional spillovers on the rate of firm formation in two major West German industries for the time period from 1989 to 1993. I exploit regional variations in firm formation at the county level to identify the effects of historically given industry structure and employment structure on the emergence of new firms. The results are consistent with the existence of localization and urbanization effects. The emergence of high technology firms seems to be contingent on a heterogeneous historical industry structure, the existence of service providers and in particular on a high share of scientists in universities and extra-university research laboratories. --

Intended and Unintended Consequences of a Publish-or-Perish Culture: A Worldwide Survey

Abstract: How does publication pressure in modern-day universities affect the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards in science? By using a worldwide survey among demographers in developed and developing countries, we show that the large majority perceive the publication pressure as high, but more so in Anglo-Saxon countries and to a lesser extent in Western Europe. However, scholars see both the pros (upward mobility) and cons (excessive publication and uncitedness, neglect of policy issues, etc.) of the so-called “publish-or-perish” culture. By measuring behavior in terms of reading and publishing, and perceived extrinsic rewards and stated intrinsic rewards of practicing science, it turns out that publication pressure negatively affects the orientation of demographers towards policy and knowledge of the population facts. There are no signs that the pressure affects reading and publishing outside the core discipline.Incentives;productivity;science;publications;university

PROFESSIONAL DIVERSITY IN AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS: SALVATION OR SUICIDE?

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,