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Four decades of health economics through a bibliometric lens

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  • Wagstaff, Adam
  • Culyer, Anthony J.

Abstract

In this paper, we take a bibliometric tour of the last forty years of health economics using bibliographic “metadata” from EconLit supplemented by citation data from Google Scholar and our own topical classifications. We report the growth of health economics (we find 33,000 publications since 1969—12,000 more than in the economics of education) and list the 300 most-cited publications broken down by topic. We report the changing topical and geographic focus of health economics (the topics ‘Determinants of health and ill-health’ and ‘Health statistics and econometrics’ both show an upward trend, and the field has expanded appreciably into the developing world). We also compare authors, countries, institutions and journals in terms of the volume of publications and their influence as measured through various citation-based indices (Grossman, the US, Harvard and the JHE emerge close to or at the top on a variety of measures).

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  • Wagstaff, Adam & Culyer, Anthony J., 2012. "Four decades of health economics through a bibliometric lens," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 406-439.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:31:y:2012:i:2:p:406-439
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2012.03.002
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Health economics; Bibliometrics; History of economic thought;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B20 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought since 1925 - - - General
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General

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