Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Tyranny of the Top Five

James Heckman and Sidharth Moktan ()
Additional contact information
Sidharth Moktan: University of Chicago

No 82, Working Papers Series from Institute for New Economic Thinking

Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between placement of publications in Top Five (T5) journals and receipt of tenure in academic economics departments. Analyzing the job histories of tenure-track economists hired by the top 35 U.S. economics departments, we find that T5 publications have a powerful influence on tenure decisions and rates of transition to tenure. A survey of the perceptions of young economists supports the formal statistical analysis. Pursuit of T5 publications has become the obsession of the next generation of economists. However, the T5 screen is far from reliable. A substantial share of influential publications appears in non-T5 outlets. Reliance on the T5 to screen talent incentivizes careerism over creativity.

Keywords: tenure and promotion practices; career concerns; economics publishing; citations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 I23 J44 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 pages
Date: 2018-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-hpe, nep-ore and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (45)

Published

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/Heckm ... v3-final-Sept-30.pdf (application/pdf)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3258226 First version, 2018 (text/html)

Related works:
Chapter: Publishing and promotion in economics - The tyranny of the Top Five (2020)
Journal Article: Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Tyranny of the Top Five (2020)
Working Paper: Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Tyranny of the Top Five (2018)
Working Paper: Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Tyranny of the Top Five (2018)
Working Paper: Publishing and Promotion in Economics: The Tyranny of the Top Five (2018)
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:thk:wpaper:82

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3258226

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers Series from Institute for New Economic Thinking Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Pia Malaney ().