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World-Leading Research and its Measurement

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Author Info
Oswald, Andrew J. (University of Warwick)

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Abstract

Journalists and others have asked me whether the favourable RAE 2008 results for UK economics are believable. This is a fair question. It also opens up a broader and more important one: how can we design a bibliometric method to assess the quality (rather than merely quantity) of a nation’s science? To try to address this, I examine objective data on the world’s most influential economics articles. I find that the United Kingdom performed reasonably well over the 2001-2008 period. Of 450 genuinely world-leading journal articles, the UK produced 10% of them -- and was the source of the most-cited article in each of the Journal of Econometrics, the International Economic Review, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Rand Journal of Economics, and of the second most-cited article in the Journal of Health Economics. Interestingly, more than a quarter of these world-leading UK articles came from outside the best-known half-dozen departments. Thus the modern emphasis on ‘top’ departments and the idea that funding should be concentrated in a few places may be mistaken. Pluralism may help to foster iconoclastic ideas.

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Paper provided by University of Warwick, Department of Economics in its series The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) with number 887.

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Length: 20 pages
Date of creation: 2009
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Handle: RePEc:wrk:warwec:887

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Keywords: Science ; evaluation ; peer-review ; citations ; research assessment exercise.;

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Andrew J. Oswald, 2007. "An Examination of the Reliability of Prestigious Scholarly Journals: Evidence and Implications for Decision-Makers," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(293), pages 21-31, 02. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. DREZE, Jacques & ESTEVAN, Fernanda, 2006. "Research and higher education in economics: can we deliver the Lisbon objectives ?," CORE Discussion Papers 2006051, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE). [Downloadable!]
  3. Machin, Stephen & Oswald, Andrew, 2000. "UK Economics and the Future Supply of Academic Economists," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(464), pages F334-49, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Nicholas Vasilakos & Gauthier Lanot & Tim Worrall, 2007. "Evaluating the Performance of UK Research in Economics," Keele Economics Research Papers KERP 2007/10, Centre for Economic Research, Keele University. [Downloadable!]
  5. Im, Kyung So & Pesaran, M. Hashem & Shin, Yongcheol, 2003. "Testing for unit roots in heterogeneous panels," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 53-74, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Glenn Ellison, 2007. "Is Peer Review in Decline?," NBER Working Papers 13272, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Amanda Goodall, 2005. "Should Research Universities be led by top researchers? Part 1: Are they?," CEE Discussion Papers 0051, Centre for the Economics of Education, LSE. [Downloadable!]
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  8. J. Peter Neary & James A. Mirrlees & Jean Tirole, 2003. "Evaluating Economics Research in Europe: An Introduction," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(6), pages 1239-1249, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Frey, Bruno S, 2003. " Publishing as Prostitution?--Choosing between One's Own Ideas and Academic Success," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 116(1-2), pages 205-23, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Ana Rute Cardoso & Paulo Guimarães & Klaus F. Zimmermann, 2008. "Comparing the Early Research Performance of PhD Graduates in Labor Economics in Europe and the USA," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 850, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
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  11. Brazier, John & Roberts, Jennifer & Deverill, Mark, 2002. "The estimation of a preference-based measure of health from the SF-36," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 271-292, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Daniel S. Hamermesh & Peter Schmidt, 2003. "The Determinants of Econometric Society Fellows Elections," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(1), pages 399-407, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Scott Smart & Joel Waldfogel, 1996. "A Citation-Based Test for Discrimination at Economics and Finance Journals," NBER Working Papers 5460, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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