The Politics of Academic Research

Matthew Ringgenberg, Chong Shu and Ingrid M. Werner
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Ingrid M. Werner: Ohio State U

Working Paper Series from Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics

Abstract: We develop a novel measure of political slant in research to examine whether political ideology influences the content and use of academic research. Our measure examines the frequency of citations from think tanks with different political ideologies and allows us to examine both the supply and demand for research. We find that research in Economics and Political Science displays a liberal slant, while Finance and Accounting research exhibits a conservative slant, and these differences cannot be accounted for by variations in research topics. We also find that the ideological slant of researchers is positively correlated with that of their Ph.D. institution and research conducted outside universities appears to cater more to the political party of the current President. Finally, political donations data confirms that the ideological slant we measure based on think tank citations aligns with the political values of researchers. Our findings have important implications for the structure of research funding.

JEL-codes: G12 G14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme, nep-hpe, nep-pol and nep-sog
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecl:ohidic:2023-12

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