Creative Careers: The Life Cycles of Nobel Laureates in Economics

Bruce Weinberg and David Galenson

No 11799, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper studies life cycle creativity among Nobel laureate economists. We identify two distinct life cycles of scholarly creativity. Experimental innovators work inductively, accumulating knowledge from experience. Conceptual innovators work deductively, applying abstract principles. We find that conceptual innovators do their most important work earlier in their careers than experimental laureates. For instance, our estimates imply that the probability that the most conceptual laureate publishes his single best work peaks at age 25 compared to the mid-50s for the most experimental laureate. Thus while experience benefits experimental innovators, newness to a field benefits conceptual innovators.

JEL-codes: B31 J24 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-exp, nep-hpe and nep-sog
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

Published as Bruce A. Weinberg & David W. Galenson, 2019. "Creative Careers: The Life Cycles of Nobel Laureates in Economics," De Economist, Springer, vol. 167(3), pages 221-239, September.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11799.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Creative Careers: The Life Cycles of Nobel Laureates in Economics (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11799

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11799

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().