Trends in economic research

Cardoso and co have another interesting paper. Here’s the abstract:

Given the recent efforts in several countries to reorganize the research institutional setting to improve research productivity, our analysis addresses the following questions: To which extent has the recent awareness over international quality standards in economics around the world been reflected in research performance? How have individual countries fared? Do research quantity and quality indicators tell us the same story? We concentrate on trends taking place since the beginning of the 1990s and rely on a very comprehensive database of scientific journals, to provide a cross-country comparison of the evolution of research in economics. Our findings indicate that Europe is catching up with the US but, in terms of
influential research, the US maintains a dominant position. The main continental European countries, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, experienced some of the largest growth rates in economic scientific output. Other European countries, namely the UK, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden, have shown remarkable progress in per capita output. Collaborative research seems to be a key factor explaining the relative success of some European countries, in particular when it comes to publishing in top journals, attained predominantly through international collaborations.

Unfortunately, they did not include Ireland.

10 replies on “Trends in economic research”

Poor old Richard must be devastated by Bjorn Lomberg’s heresy today. And Michael Crichton is dead! Who to look to for quack inspiration? You can always join the anti-vaccine movement, I guess. You’d get to hang out with Jenny McCarthy!

Wow Ben, thats a great analysis of the trends in economic research. Why not put a paper into J Econ Perspectives on “trolling as a tool for policy formation” ?

Ben, maybe you should go to Croke Park. You’re allowed to yell and scream there too and for a change it would be relevant and/or constructive.

I would be interested in how the, admittedly probably small, proportion of this research that is relevant is incorporated in the formation of public policy.

Perhaps another thread dealing with Lomberg’s alleged ‘recantation’ – accompanied perhaps by some consideration of the scientific assessment of the IPCC’s procedures might be a way of keeping the focus.

What kind of economic research are we talking about here? Economics as the construction of mathematical models of dubious applicability, economics as an empirical social ‘science’, economics as an ideological justification for exploitation and wreaking havoc, or economics as thought experimention into other ways of organising our material existence. I’m sure the US leads in some of these, but does it matter?

100 bn expenditure, eh, Mr. Tol. I guess you can cross Bjorn off your Christmas card list. Do I detect a space opening up in the book market for an academic entrepreneur?

@Ben
You would be interested to know that in his 2001 book, the Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg calls for a carbon tax — and that he cites Tol (1999) in evidence. Lomborg has consistently repeated that call since then.

Lomborg has also time and again rallied against the ignorance of many a green. You neatly illustrate his point.

I think, by the way, that one should be reluctant to mock a parent of a chronically and seriously ill child.

@richard tol

You terminated in decidely non-Amsterdam style “the discussion” elsewhere. Thuggish soccer players like van Bommel get transferred to Munchen, with full Dutch approval. So grandma, have you seen my fiets?

Before you terminated the discussion, a uniquely curious web-behaviour, you pitched a technical glitch as the reason for the omission for a rigourous comment (tech analysis possibly suggests otherwise). Just a few weeks after the possible but unlikely glitch from another universe you went to town on another human’s website claiming that human was censoring your esteemed comments. That’s not in the spirit of Amsterdam nor in the black stocking towns out in the bogs on the wrong side of the Amstel Veense bogs where Irish criminals hide out.

Holland may be flat. However you have directly stated in flat-earth style that incineration has been ruled out as the cause for one thousand excess deaths in Amsterdam (compared to Rotterdam, Utrecht, Etc).

You have repeatedly given totally evasive references, similar to you evasive references to Gorecki on PM 2.5s. I recognise economics is only a dismal science. True scientists give full, direct and non-evasive references, and usually include apt excerpts.

The following is your totally cynical and evasive reference now “closed to discussion”, a decidely non-Dutch behaviour:

EX: “On the matter of excess deaths in Amsterdam, I have repeatedly referred you to the RIVM website: http://www.rivm.nl/

This evasive and non-specific reference is totally dishonest. Some but not others consider it to be a lie. Its less honest
than a reference to http://www.aol.com/nowhere/sodemieterop .

Remember you are a public servant paid by Irish taxpayers; your total-cost-envelope of €200,000 per year can perhaps better fund hospitals now shuttered by lousy pyramid scheme non-advice from ESRI.

So claiming you have better things to do as you have done than to educate the aardapple eaters of ireland is not credible.

Especially with ESRI bending over backwards on this site to support esri-spin-funder ‘undue-influence-in-public-process-DCC’, and indirectly lawbreaker Covanta.

Please supply a direct reference to your assertion that incineration has been ruled out as the cause for one thousand excess deaths in Amsterdam.

Mit tiefer Dankbarkeit!

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