Social Networks and Research Output

Lorenzo Ductor, Marcel Fafchamps, Sanjeev Goyal and Marco van der Leij

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2014, vol. 96, issue 5, 936-948

Abstract: We study how knowledge about the social network of an individual researcher, as embodied in his coauthor relations, helps us in developing a more accurate prediction of his or her future productivity. We find that incorporating information about coauthor networks leads to a modest improvement in the accuracy of forecasts on individual output, over and above what we can predict based on the knowledge of past individual output. Second, we find that the informativeness of networks dissipates over the lifetime of a researcher's career. This suggests that the signaling content of the network is quantitatively more important than the flow of ideas.

Keywords: social networks; researchers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 D85 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (100)

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