Citations in Economics: Measurement, Uses and Impacts

Daniel Hamermesh

No 9593, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: I describe and compare sources of data on citations in economics and the statistics that can be constructed from them. Constructing data sets of the post-publication citation histories of articles published in the "Top 5" journals in the 1970s and the 2000s, I examine distributions and life cycles of citations, compare citation histories of articles in different sub-specialties in economics and present evidence on the history and heterogeneity of those journals' impacts and the marginal citation productivity of additional coauthors. I use a new data set of the lifetime citation histories of over 1000 economists from 30 universities to rank economics departments by various measures and to demonstrate the importance of intra- and interdepartmental heterogeneity in productivity. Throughout, the discussion summarizes earlier work. I survey research on the impacts of citations on salaries and non-monetary rewards and discuss how citations reflect judgments about research quality in economics.

Keywords: academic productivity; tournaments; publication; rankings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 B31 J01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 61 pages
Date: 2015-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-sog
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Literature, 2018, 56, 111 - 156

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Journal Article: Citations in Economics: Measurement, Uses, and Impacts (2018)
Working Paper: Citations in Economics: Measurement, Uses and Impacts (2015)
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