Publishing Trends in Economics across Colleges and Universities, 1991-2007

There is good reason to think that non-elite programs in economics may be producing relatively more research than in the past: Research expectations have been ramped-up at non-PhD institutions and new information technologies have changed the way academic knowledge is produced and exchanged. This study investigates this question by examining publishing productivity in economics (and business) using data from the Web of Science (Knowledge) for a broad set of institutions – both elite and non-elite – over a 17-year period, from 1991 through 2007. Institutions are grouped into six tiers using a variety of sources. The analysis provides evidence that non-elite institutions are gaining on their more elite counterparts, but the magnitude of the gains are small. Thus, the story is more of constancy than of change, even in the face of changing technology and rising research expectations.higher education, research productivity, publishing trends, inequality

Publishing Trends in Economics across Colleges and Universities, 1991-2007

Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may b

The Diffusion of Information Technology and the Increased Propensity of Teams to Transcend Institutional and National Borders

This study examines the relationship between the diffusion of IT and changes in collaboration patterns across institutional and national borders. To undertake the research, the authors match an explicit measure of institutional IT adoption (domain names, e.g. www.umsl.edu) with institutional data on all published papers indexed by ISI for over 1,200 U.S. four-year colleges, universities and medical schools for the years 1991-2007. The publication data examined cover the social sciences and natural sciences and narrower fields such as economics and biology. Two measures of institutional collaboration are examined: (1) percent of papers produced by a U.S. institution with one or more co-authors at another U.S. institution (US-US); and (2) percent of papers produced by a U.S. institution with one or more non-U.S. coauthors (US-INTL). We first describe collaboration patterns across universities and then use regression analysis to examine the impact of IT exposure on multi-institution collaboration. IT exposure is measured by the number of years elapsed since an institution's adoption of a domain name. Results indicate dramatic growth in the percentage of both US-US and US-INTL collaborations, as well as important differences by field. The study provides modest evidence that length of IT exposure has had a positive and significant effect on both US-US and US-INTL collaborations