Diversity and collaboration in Economics

Papers written by coauthors from different countries, on average, are published in better journals, have higher citations counts, and are evaluated more positively by peers. Similar `diversity premia' exist for inter-ethnic and inter-gender collaborations. Using data on collaborations among 34 thousand economists, this paper considers possible explanations for the positive quality-diversity correlation. After controlling for a range of relevant factors, the authors' position in the global research network plays an important role in explaining variation in the quality of collaboration, proxied by citation counts and simple impact factor of the journal in which the article is published. Access to non-redundant social ties in the global research network is associated with greater quality of the collaboration. Geographic, gender and ethnic diversity premia on collaboration quality disappear after controlling for the authors' global network position, suggesting that diversity is important only to the extent that it correlates with non-redundancy of social ties.