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Co-worker network: How closely are researchers who published in the top five economics journals related?

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Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the academic backgrounds of 3587 researchers who published in the top five economics journals in the last 10 years. We find that the researchers come from relatively diverse backgrounds at the undergraduate level, but their PhD degree-granting institutions are more concentrated. Most researchers work in a few prestigious institutions after their graduation. Therefore, co-worker relations among researchers are quite common. Many co-authors who are unrelated at the time of publication were co-workers in the past. Co-worker networks are found to be much denser than co-author networks.

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Notes

  1. For example, according to the 2017 Shanghai rankings, nine of the top ten institutions in economics are from the USA. (www.shanghairanking.com/Shanghairanking-Subject-Rankings-2017/economics.html).

  2. Because some researchers record more than one undergraduate field in their CVs, some researchers are counted more than once. If a field is recorded as secondary (e.g. minor), we did not take it into account.

  3. Rankings are obtained from <www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/economics-rankings>.

  4. Because of lack of data, we only record years for start and end date of a career stage. For example, a researcher who has spent 2005 to 2008 in an institution is considered to have spent 3 years. This is a fair assumption because most academic jobs start and end in September.

  5. Only 46 articles have five or six authors, so we choose to exclude them from the table.

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Acknowledgements

Part of this research Project was conducted while I was visiting Queensland University of Technology. The visit is funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) (Grant No. BİDEB-2219). I would like to thank Benno Torgler, Ho Fai Chan, and Sule Yazici for their valuable comments.

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  1. Department of Economics, Faculty of Management, Istanbul Technical University, Macka, 34367, Istanbul, Turkey

    Tolga Yuret

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  1. Tolga Yuret
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Yuret, T. Co-worker network: How closely are researchers who published in the top five economics journals related?. Scientometrics 124, 2301–2317 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03589-0

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