High and Rising Institutional Concentration of Award-Winning Economists

Richard Freeman, Danxia Xie, Hanzhe Zhang () and Hanzhang Zhou

No 35875, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We analyze the academic affiliations of nearly 6,000 award-winning researchers in 18 major fields in the natural sciences, engineering, and social sciences from the 1820s to the 2020s, focusing on the 1960s onward. The analysis reveals a trend of declining concentration in the institutional affiliations of award-winning researchers, shifting from a few science-strong universities in high-income countries to a more diverse set of institutions across the world. The decline in concentration is observed in all fields except one: economics. The institutional affiliations of prizewinning economists have become more concentrated over time, making economics the most concentrated field. We associate the higher concentration of prizewinning work in economics with the field’s stronger sorting by institutional prestige, its lower reliance on specialized equipment and instruments, and its assessment of findings based on a synthesis of evidence rather than on decisive experiments or proofs. We discuss the benefits and costs of this high and rising institutional concentration of prizewinning economists.

JEL-codes: A11 A12 A14 I23 J44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-10
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