A local idea space: the value of personal and thematic proximity in academic research

Lukas Kuld

Economic Papers from Trinity College Dublin, Economics Department

Abstract: While recent research has found no strong overall effects between colleagues in university departments, this paper shows a clear link between the success of individual research articles and local colleagues when their research is directly related. Using data from the CVs of around 1,000 academic economists, I study research links between department colleagues and their impact on citations. The novel focus on articles also addresses endogeneity concerns using differences in the scope of the effect for article quality and dissemination by publication type and peer group. The estimates show that articles in top 25 journals that draw on research of local colleagues receive significantly more citations than comparable work by the same authors. Conversely, the co-author network is primarily correlated with low-profile journals and arguably reflect widely the authors' field-specific standing.

Keywords: Local research cluster; co-author network; tacit knowledge; scientific productivity; academic economic research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A14 D83 I23 J24 O31 O32 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2017-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-sog
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tcd:tcduee:tep0617

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