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U.S. and them : the geography of academic research

Author:	Das, Jishnu; Do, Quy-Toan; Shaines, Karen; Srinivasan, Sowmya;	Collection Title:	Policy Research working paper ; no. WPS 5152
Country:	World;	Date Stored:	2009/12/10
Document Date:	2009/12/01	Document Type:	Policy Research Working Paper
Language:	English	Major Sector:	Public Administration, Law, and Justice
Rel. Proj ID:	1W-Is Research Pro-Poor? -- -- P105039;	Region:	The World Region
Report Number:	WPS5152	Sub Sectors:	General public administration sector
SubTopics:	Information Security & Privacy; Economic Theory & Research; Tertiary Education; Labor Policies; Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems	Volume No:	1 of 1
Related Dataset:	The Geography of Academic Research: dataset;

Summary: Using a database of 76,046 empirical economics papers published between 1985 and 2004 in the top 202 economics journals, the authors report two associations. First, per-capita research output on a given country increases with the country's per capita gross domestic product (GDP). Regressions controlling for data availability and quality in the country, indicators of governance and the use of English yield an estimated research-GDP elasticity of 0.37; surprisingly, the United States (US) is not an outlier in the production of empirical research. Second, papers written about the US are far more likely to be published in the top five economics journals, even after the quality of research has been partially controlled for through fixed-effects for the authors' institutional affiliations; the estimates suggest that papers on the US are 2.6 percentage points more likely to be published in the top-five journals. This is a large effect because only 1.5 percent of all papers written about countries other than the US are published in the top-five journals. The authors speculate about the interpretations of these facts, and invite further analysis and additions to the public release of the database that accompanies this paper.


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