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Sic transit gloria mundi: What remains of famous economists after their deaths?

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Abstract

Can famous economics scholars extend their prominence to the time after their deaths? This question is analyzed for the period 1925–2018 for Nobel Prize laureates. We find that Nobel Prize winners who die prematurely are more likely to experience a marked reduction of attention from their peers, as measured by citations. In contrast, death does not produce this effect for famous economists dying at old age. A few scholars who died prematurely are an exception to the downward trend in attention after death. Such exceptions include Clive Granger, Elinor Ostrom, and to some extent Leonid Kantorovich.

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Notes

  1. Moggridge (2012, pp. 413–415).

    Other accounts of Harry Johnson say that "He bestrode our discipline like a Colossus." "He was an institution." "Canada lost one of its greatest sons." He was "larger than life" (the most common remark). "The one and only Harry." (Corden 2004, p. 9).

  2. The role and importance of fame for scholars has been analyzed e.g.by Merton (1973), Goodell (1977), Fahy and Lewenstein (2014), Fahy (2015), and of awards by Frey (2006), Azoulay et al. (2014), Borjas and Doran (2015a), and Frey and Gallus (2016, 2017).

  3. It might even be argued that receiving a Nobel Prize is correlated with age. On average, winners of the Prize in economics are 67 years of age. One has to reach a certain age in order to have a chance of receiving the Prize (Offer and Söderberg 2016), and the appreciation given by the Prize makes scholars live longer. The relationship between aging and productivity among economists is analyzed in Oster and Hamermesh (1998).

  4. E.g. Ekelund et al. (2000), Matheson and Baade (2004), Maddison and Pedersen (2008), and Frick and Knebel (2014). The effect of the sudden death of managers on stock prices has been studied e.g. by Johnson et al. (1985). Chan et al. (2019, p. 606) find for scientists in various fields that fame rises again after death.

  5. The database for citations is the Web of Science Core Collection. We consider eight categories of publications: business, business finance, economics, international relations, management, political science, social sciences interdisciplinary, and sociology. We consider only sole authors, because in multi-author articles the extent of each author’s contribution is unclear (see e.g. Hamermesh 2013).

  6. For an extensive discussion and evaluation consult Hamermesh (2018). An example for a multidimensional measure of scholarly output is given in Van den Besselaar and Sandström (2019).

  7. The list of Nobel Prize winners in Economics is given in https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-prizes-in-economic-sciences/.

  8. We use the following procedure to standardize the number of citations to Johnson:

    • (1) Johnson’s yearly percentage share of his total citations.

    • (2) For each Nobel the yearly percentage share of their total citations.

    • (3) The mean of all active Nobels in the corresponding year.

    • (4) Division of (1) by (3).

  9. For analyses of economics Nobel Prize winners, see e.g. Chan and Torgler (2012), Chan et al. (2014), Weinberg and Galenson (2005), Zuckerman(1995).

  10. We use the following procedure to normalize the number of citations:

    • (1) For each scholar of a group, the yearly percentage share of their total citations.

    • (2) For each Nobel Prize winner, the yearly percentage share of their total citations.

    • (3) The mean for all active Nobel Prize winners in the corresponding year.

    • (4) Division of (1) by (3).

    • (5) From that, the mean for all active scholars of a group in the corresponding year is taken.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Permanent Visiting Professor University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Bruno S. Frey

  2. CREMA – Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, Zurich, Switzerland

    Bruno S. Frey

  3. CREW – Center for Research in Economic Well-Being, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Anthony Gullo

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  1. Bruno S. Frey
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  2. Anthony Gullo
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Correspondence to Bruno S. Frey.

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Frey, B.S., Gullo, A. Sic transit gloria mundi: What remains of famous economists after their deaths?. Scientometrics 123, 283–298 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03393-w

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