IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecanpo/v44y2014i2p212-220.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economics of co-authorship

Author

Listed:
  • Bruna Bruno

Abstract

Starting with the literature on the rising incidence of co-authorship in economics, this paper presents a theoretical model to analyze choices of co-authorship based on the assumption that authors are motivated to optimize the returns to publications. The model analyzes two pay structures, one that is proportional to the number of authors, and one that is not. The heterogeneity of the researchers implies for the policy-maker a trade-off between the objective of maximizing effort and that of selecting better researchers. The trade-off is more relevant when low-quality researchers choose opportunistic behavior in order to collaborate with high-quality researchers.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruna Bruno, 2014. "Economics of co-authorship," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 212-220.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v:44:y:2014:i:2:p:212-220
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0313592614000241
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tom Coupé, 2004. "What Do We Know about Ourselves? on the Economics of Economics," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(2), pages 197-215, May.
    2. McDowell, John M & Melvin, Michael, 1983. "The Determinants of Co-Authorship: An Analysis of the Economics Literature," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 65(1), pages 155-160, February.
    3. Hollis, Aidan, 2001. "Co-authorship and the output of academic economists," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 503-530, September.
    4. Laband, David N. & Piette, Michael J., 1995. "Team production in economics: division of labor or mentoring?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 33-40, March.
    5. McDowell, John M & Smith, Janet Kiholm, 1992. "The Effect of Gender-Sorting on Propensity to Coauthor: Implications for Academic Promotion," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 30(1), pages 68-82, January.
    6. John Hudson, 1996. "Trends in Multi-authored Papers in Economics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 153-158, Summer.
    7. Sauer, Raymond D, 1988. "Estimates of the Returns to Quality and Coauthorship in Economic Academia," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(4), pages 855-866, August.
    8. Mixon, Franklin Jr., 1997. "Team production in economics: A comment and extension," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 185-191, June.
    9. Maria Cristina Marcuzzo & Giulia Zacchia, 2007. "L'ECONLIT e gli strumenti per la valutazione della ricerca economica in Italia," Rivista italiana degli economisti, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 2, pages 277-306.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Francis Bidault & Thomas Hildebrand, 2012. "The distribution of partnerships benefits: Evidence from co-authorships in economics journals," ESMT Research Working Papers ESMT-12-08, ESMT European School of Management and Technology.
    2. Antonio Abatemarco & Roberto Dell'Anno, 2012. "Italian Reform of the academic recruitment system. An appraisal of ANVUR and CUN benchmarks for assessing candidates and commissioners," Rivista italiana degli economisti, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 441-480.
    3. Luigi Aldieri & Gennaro Guida & Maxim Kotsemir & Concetto Paolo Vinci, 2019. "An investigation of impact of research collaboration on academic performance in Italy," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 2003-2040, July.
    4. Besancenot, Damien & Huynh, Kim & Serranito, Francisco, 2017. "Co-authorship and research productivity in economics: Assessing the assortative matching hypothesis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 61-80.
    5. Damien Besancenot & Kim Van Huynh & Francisco Serranito, 2015. " Thou shalt not work alone ," CEPN Working Papers hal-01175758, HAL.
    6. Antonio Abatemarco & Roberto Dell’Anno, 2013. "Certainty equivalent citation: generalized classes of citation indexes," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(1), pages 263-271, January.
    7. David Ong & Ho Fai Chan & Benno Torgler & Yu (Alan) Yang, 2015. "Endogenous selection into single and coauthorships by surname initials in economics and management," CREMA Working Paper Series 2015-01, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    8. Bidault, Francis & Hildebrand, Thomas, 2014. "The distribution of partnership returns: Evidence from co-authorships in economics journals," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(6), pages 1002-1013.
    9. David Ong & Ho Fai Chan & Benno Torgler & Yu (Alan) Yang, 2015. "Endogenous selection into single and coauthorships by surname initials in economics and management," CREMA Working Paper Series 2015-01, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    10. Ong, David & Chan, Ho Fai & Torgler, Benno & Yang, Yu (Alan), 2018. "Collaboration incentives: Endogenous selection into single and coauthorships by surname initial in economics and management," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 41-57.
    11. Conan Mukherjee & Ranojoy Basu & Aftab Alam, 2020. "A measure of authorship by publications," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(3), pages 354-361, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Giulio Cainelli & Mario A. Maggioni & T. Erika Uberti & Annunziata Felice, 2015. "The strength of strong ties: How co-authorship affect productivity of academic economists?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(1), pages 673-699, January.
    2. Stan J. Liebowitz, 2014. "Willful Blindness: The Inefficient Reward Structure In Academic Research," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(4), pages 1267-1283, October.
    3. Maria Rosaria Carillo & Erasmo Papagni & Alessandro Sapio, 2012. "Do collaborations enhance the high-quality output of scientific institutions? Evidence from the Italian Research Assessment Exercise (2001-2003)," Discussion Papers 4_2012, CRISEI, University of Naples "Parthenope", Italy.
    4. Hollis, Aidan, 2001. "Co-authorship and the output of academic economists," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 503-530, September.
    5. Carillo, Maria Rosaria & Papagni, Erasmo & Sapio, Alessandro, 2013. "Do collaborations enhance the high-quality output of scientific institutions? Evidence from the Italian Research Assessment Exercise," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 25-36.
    6. Hendrik P. van Dalen, 1999. "The Golden Age of Nobel Economists," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 43(2), pages 19-35, October.
    7. Lukas Kuld & John O'Hagan, 2017. "Rise of Multi-authored Papers in Economics: Demise of the 'Lone Star' and Why?," Trinity Economics Papers tep0517, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    8. Ishida, Junichiro, 2009. "Incentives in academics: Collaboration under weak complementarities," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 215-223, April.
    9. Hilmer, Christiana E. & Hilmer, Michael J., 2004. "On The Return To Journal Quality, Coauthorship And Author Order Within Top Ranked Agricultural Economics Programs," 2004 Annual meeting, August 1-4, Denver, CO 20179, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    10. Bidault, Francis & Hildebrand, Thomas, 2014. "The distribution of partnership returns: Evidence from co-authorships in economics journals," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(6), pages 1002-1013.
    11. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2013. "Six Decades of Top Economics Publishing: Who and How?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(1), pages 162-172, March.
    12. Breton, Michele & St-Amour, Pascal & Vencatachellum, Desire, 2003. "Dynamic production teams with strategic behavior," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 875-905, March.
    13. Muhammad Asali, 2019. "A tale of two tracks," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(3), pages 323-337, May.
    14. Michael Rauber & Heinrich W. Ursprung, 2008. "Life Cycle and Cohort Productivity in Economic Research: The Case of Germany," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 9(4), pages 431-456, November.
    15. Pedro Cosme Costa Vieira, 2008. "An economics journals' ranking that takes into account the number of pages and co-authors," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(7), pages 853-861.
    16. Damien Besancenot & Kim Van Huynh & Francisco Serranito, 2015. " Thou shalt not work alone ," CEPN Working Papers hal-01175758, HAL.
    17. Seongkyoon Jeong & Jae Young Choi & Jaeyun Kim, 2011. "The determinants of research collaboration modes: exploring the effects of research and researcher characteristics on co-authorship," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 89(3), pages 967-983, December.
    18. Francis Bidault & Thomas Hildebrand, 2012. "The distribution of partnerships benefits: Evidence from co-authorships in economics journals," ESMT Research Working Papers ESMT-12-08, ESMT European School of Management and Technology.
    19. David Ong & Ho Fai Chan & Benno Torgler & Yu (Alan) Yang, 2015. "Endogenous selection into single and coauthorships by surname initials in economics and management," CREMA Working Paper Series 2015-01, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    20. Enrico Miersch, 2020. "Research Evaluation of Financial Research - Evidence from a Survey," Credit and Capital Markets, Credit and Capital Markets, vol. 53(3), pages 383-419.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D0 - Microeconomics - - General
    • J40 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - General
    • A11 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Role of Economics; Role of Economists

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecanpo:v:44:y:2014:i:2:p:212-220. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/economic-analysis-and-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.