Systematic Bias in the Progress of Research

Amir Rubin and Eran Rubin

Journal of Political Economy, 2021, vol. 129, issue 9, 2666 - 2719

Abstract: We analyze the extent to which citing practices may be driven by strategic considerations. The discontinuation of the Journal of Business (JB) in 2006 for extraneous reasons serves as an exogenous shock for analyzing strategic citing behavior. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, we find that articles published in JB before 2006 experienced a relative reduction in citations of approximately 20% after 2006. Since the discontinuation of JB is unrelated to the scientific contributions of its articles, the results imply that the referencing of articles is systematically affected by strategic considerations, which hinders scientific progress.

Date: 2021
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