The Reverse Matthew Effect: Consequences of Retraction in Scientific Teams

Ginger Zhe Jin, Benjamin Jones, Susan Feng Lu and Brian Uzzi
Additional contact information
Ginger Zhe Jin: University of Maryland and NBER
Susan Feng Lu: Purdue University and CCER
Brian Uzzi: Northwestern University

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2019, vol. 101, issue 3, 492-506

Abstract: Teamwork pervades modern production, yet teamwork can make individual roles difficult to ascertain. The Matthew effect suggests that communities reward eminent team members for great outcomes at the expense of less eminent team members. We study this phenomenon in reverse, investigating credit sharing after damaging events. Our context is article retractions in the sciences. We find that retractions impose little citation penalty on the prior work of eminent coauthors, but less eminent coauthors experience substantial citation declines, especially when teamed with eminent authors. These findings suggest a reverse Matthew effect for team-produced negative events. A Bayesian model provides a candidate interpretation.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/rest_a_00780 (application/pdf)
Access to PDF is restricted to 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:tpr:restat:v:101:y:2019:i:3:p:492-506

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().