Interdisciplinary influences in behavioral economics: a bibliometric analysis of cross-disciplinary citations

Interdisciplinarity in behavioral economics (BE) has often been described as limited or decreasing since the 1980s. In this article, we investigate the interdisciplinary influences of behavioral economists using quantitative techniques. We find that following an intense period of interdisciplinary exchange among a handful of individuals, interdisciplinarity between economics and psychology has decreased in BE since the 1980s. However, this decreasing interdisciplinarity in BE has been compensated for by the rise of BE in the wider field of economics. While individual BE articles have become less intensely related to psychology, the growing number of BE articles in economics as a whole has intensified the overall interdisciplinarity between economics and psychology. Moreover, the decreasing interdisciplinarity between economics and psychology in BE has not resulted in a return to a self-sufficient economic approach. Instead, we observe a rise in the importance of management studies, as well as a variety of other disciplines in the social and natural sciences, as behavioral economists have diversified their interdisciplinary relationships since the 2000s. Finally, the level of interdisciplinarity between economics and psychology in behavioral economics remains higher than the average economics' article, making the specialty distinctively interdisciplinary.