Understanding the Changing Structure of Scientific Inquiry

Ajay Agrawal, Avi Goldfarb and Florenta Teodoridis

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2016, vol. 8, issue 1, 100-128

Abstract: The fall of the Iron Curtain led to an influx of new mathematical ideas into western science. We show that research teams grew disproportionately in size in subfields of mathematics in which the Soviets were strongest. This is consistent with the knowledge burden hypothesis that an outward shift in the knowledge frontier increases the returns to collaboration. We also report additional evidence consistent with this interpretation: (i) The effect is present in countries outside the United States and is not correlated with the local population of Soviet scholars, (ii) Researchers in Soviet-rich subfields disproportionately increased their level of specialization. (JEL I23, O31, O33, P36)

JEL-codes: I23 O31 O33 P36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
Note: DOI: 10.1257/app.20140135
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/app.20140135 (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/app/data/0801/2014-0135_data.zip (application/zip)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/app/ds/0801/2014-0135_ds.zip (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
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:aea:aejapp:v:8:y:2016:i:1:p:100-128

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics is currently edited by Alexandre Mas

More articles in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().