The Economics of Citation

Jeong-Yoo Kim, Insik Min and Christian Zimmermann
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Insik Min: Kyung Hee University

Korean Economic Review, 2011, vol. 27, 93-114

Abstract: This paper studies the citation decision of a scientific author. When an author can make his argument more persuasive by citing a related work, this is called the correlation effect. On the other hand, when an author cites someone else’s work, he gives the impression that he views the cited author as more competent than himself; this is called the signaling effect. These two effects are the main causes of citation bias. Using data from Research Papers in Economics or RePEc, a decentralized database of working papers, journal articles and professional books, we empirically show that a citation bias exists in this field. The empirical finding is obtained by controlling for many variables that affect citation patterns, such as network factors (co-authorship and an author’s affiliation) and language.

Keywords: Citation Bias; Correlation Effect; Signaling Effect; Strategy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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http://keapaper.kea.ne.kr/RePEc/kea/keappr/KER-20110630-27-1-05.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Economics of Citation (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kea:keappr:ker-20110630-27-1-05

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