What have economists been doing for the last 50 years? A text analysis of published academic research from 1960-2010

Lea-Rachel Kosnik

No 2015-4, Economics Discussion Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel)

Abstract: This paper presents the results of a text based exploratory study of over 20,000 academic articles published in seven top research journals from 1960-2010. The goal is to investigate the general research foci of economists over the last fifty years, how (if at all) they have changed over time, and what trends (if any) can be discerned from a broad body of the top academic research in the field. Of the 19 JEL-code based fields studied in the literature, most have retained a constant level of attention over the time period of this study, however, a notable exception is that of macroeconomics which has undergone a significantly diminishing level of research attention in the last couple of decades, across all the journals under study; at the same time, the "microfoundations" of macroeconomic papers appears to be increasing. Other results are also presented.

Keywords: text analysis; economics research; research diversity; topic analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 B4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/106507/1/816155003.pdf (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:20154

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