IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cep/cepdps/dp2072.html

Paper tiger? Chinese science and home bias in citations

Author

Listed:
  • Pierre Azoulay
  • Shumin Qiu
  • Claudia Steinwender

Abstract

We investigate the phenomenon of home bias in scientific citations, where researchers disproportionately cite work from their own country. We develop a benchmark for expected citations based on the relative size of countries, defining home bias as deviations from this norm. Our findings reveal that China exhibits the largest home bias across all major countries and in nearly all scientific fields studied. This stands in contrast to the pattern of home bias for China's trade in goods and services, where China does not stand out from most industrialized countries. After adjusting citation counts for home bias, we demonstrate that China's apparent rise in citation rankings is overstated. Our adjusted ranking places China fourth globally, behind the US, the UK, and Germany, tempering the perception of China's scientific dominance.

Suggested Citation

  • Pierre Azoulay & Shumin Qiu & Claudia Steinwender, 2025. "Paper tiger? Chinese science and home bias in citations," CEP Discussion Papers dp2072, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    • Handle: RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2072
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp2072.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Melitz, Jacques & Toubal, Farid, 2014. "Native language, spoken language, translation and trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 351-363.
    2. Maurice Obstfeld & Kenneth Rogoff, 2001. "The Six Major Puzzles in International Macroeconomics: Is There a Common Cause?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2000, Volume 15, pages 339-412, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Marc Correa & Lucinio González-Sabaté & Ignacio Serrano, 2013. "Home bias effect in the management literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 95(1), pages 417-433, April.
    4. Robert Flynn & Britta Glennon & Raviv Murciano-Goroff & Jiusi Xiao, 2024. "Building a Wall Around Science: The Effect of U.S.-China Tensions on International Scientific Research," NBER Working Papers 32622, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Raymond Fisman & Jing Shi & Yongxiang Wang & Rong Xu, 2018. "Social Ties and Favoritism in Chinese Science," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(3), pages 1134-1171.
    6. Teplitskiy, Misha & Duede, Eamon & Menietti, Michael & Lakhani, Karim R., 2022. "How status of research papers affects the way they are read and cited," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(4).
    7. Li Tang & Philip Shapira & Jan Youtie, 2015. "Is there a clubbing effect underlying Chinese research citation Increases?," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(9), pages 1923-1932, September.
    8. Philippe Aghion & Celine Antonin & Luc Paluskiewicz & David Stromberg & Raphael Wargon & Karolina Westin, 2023. "Does Chinese research hinge on US co-authors? Evidence from the China initiative," CEP Discussion Papers dp1936, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    9. Marta A. Santamaría & Jaume Ventura & Uğur Yeşilbayraktar, 2022. "Exploring European Regional Trade," NBER Chapters, in: NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2022, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Tianwei He, 2003. "Difficulties and challenges of Chinese scientific journals: Statistical analysis of Chinese literatures using Chinese Science Bulletin as example," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 57(1), pages 127-139, May.
    11. Alberto Baccini & Eugenio Petrovich, 2023. "A global exploratory comparison of country self-citations 1996-2019," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(12), pages 1-33, December.
    12. Qiu, Shumin & Steinwender, Claudia & Azoulay, Pierre, 2025. "Who stands on the shoulders of Chinese (Scientific) Giants? Evidence from chemistry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 54(1).
    13. Santamaría, Marta & Ventura, Jaume & Yeşilbayraktar, Uğur, 2023. "Exploring European regional trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    14. Magda Fontana & Fabio Montobbio & Paolo Racca, 2019. "Topics And Geographical Diffusion Of Knowledge In Top Economic Journals," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 57(4), pages 1771-1797, October.
    15. Jia, Ruixue & Nie, Huihua & Xiao, Wei, 2019. "Power and publications in Chinese academia," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 792-805.
    16. Vincent Larivière & Kaile Gong & Cassidy R. Sugimoto, 2018. "Citations strength begins at home," Nature, Nature, vol. 564(7735), pages 70-71, December.
    17. Zhou, Ping & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2006. "The emergence of China as a leading nation in science," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 83-104, February.
    18. Dag W. Aksnes & Liv Langfeldt & Paul Wouters, 2019. "Citations, Citation Indicators, and Research Quality: An Overview of Basic Concepts and Theories," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(1), pages 21582440198, February.
    19. Futao Huang, 2018. "Quality deficit belies the hype," Nature, Nature, vol. 564(7735), pages 70-71, December.
    20. Qingnan Xie & Richard B. Freeman, 2019. "Bigger Than You Thought: China's Contribution to Scientific Publications and Its Impact on the Global Economy," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 27(1), pages 1-27, January.
    21. Ugur Yesilbayraktar & Marta Santamaría & Jaume Ventura, 2023. "Exploring European Regional Trade," Working Papers 1384, Barcelona School of Economics.
    22. Caroline S. Wagner & Lin Zhang & Loet Leydesdorff, 2022. "A discussion of measuring the top-1% most-highly cited publications: quality and impact of Chinese papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 1825-1839, April.
    23. Santamaria, Marta & Ventura, Jaume & Yesilbayraktar, Ugur, 2023. "Exploring European Regional Trade," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1447, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    24. Head, Keith & Mayer, Thierry, 2014. "Gravity Equations: Workhorse,Toolkit, and Cookbook," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 131-195, Elsevier.
    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. Antonin Bergeaud & Ruveyda Nur Gozen & John Van Reenen, 2026. "Mapping Technological Trajectories: Evidence from Two Centuries of Patent Data," NBER Working Papers 34760, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Yang, Xiaoliang & Zhou, Peng, 2025. "Unveiling citation bias in economics: Taste-based discrimination against Chinese-authored papers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).

    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. Abou El-Komboz, Lena & Goldbeck, Moritz, 2024. "Virtually borderless? Cultural proximity and international collaboration of developers," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 244(C).
    2. Hanna Adam & Mario Larch & Jordi Paniagua, 2023. "Spain, Split and Talk: Quantifying Regional Independence," CESifo Working Paper Series 10742, CESifo.
    3. Danilo Carullo & Paolo Di Caro & Ugo Fratesi, 2025. "The role of employment, labour productivity and trade linkages in the evolution of European regional disparities," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 74(1), pages 1-30, March.
    4. Norris, Jordan J., 2025. "A many-location home market effect and a home biased geography," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    5. Alessio Baldassarre & Danilo Carullo & Paolo Caro & Elisa Fusco & Pasquale Giacobbe & Carlo Orecchia, 2025. "A New Approach to Measure Italian Regional Trade Flows with Administrative Micro Firm-Level Data," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 11(1), pages 65-101, March.
    6. Gomez, Charles J. & Lieberman, Dahlia & Mäkinen, Elina I., 2024. "Hedgehogs, foxes, and global science ecosystems: Decoding universities' research profiles across fields with nested ecological networks," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(7).
    7. Alessandro Borin & Francesco Paolo Conteduca & Fabrizio Leone & Michele Mancini & Patrick Zoi, 2025. "How Global Are Local Value Chains?," CESifo Working Paper Series 12271, CESifo.
    8. Lionel Fontagne & Krasimir Shishmanov & Penka Shishmanova & Yoto Yotov, 2025. "Asymmetric Impacts of Economic Integration: The Case of the Single European Market," Working Papers 202533, Center for Global Policy Analysis, LeBow College of Business, Drexel University.
    9. Rodolfo G. Campos & Benedikt Heid & Jacopo Timini, 2024. "The Economic Consequences of Geopolitical Fragmentation: Evidence from the Cold War," CESifo Working Paper Series 11057, CESifo.
    10. Peter H. Egger & Andrea Lassmann, 2015. "The Causal Impact of Common Native Language on International Trade: Evidence from a Spatial Regression Discontinuity Design," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(584), pages 699-745, May.
    11. Qiu, Shumin & Steinwender, Claudia & Azoulay, Pierre, 2025. "Who stands on the shoulders of Chinese (Scientific) Giants? Evidence from chemistry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 54(1).
    12. Weishu Liu & Li Tang & Mengdi Gu & Guangyuan Hu, 2015. "Feature report on China: a bibliometric analysis of China-related articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(1), pages 503-517, January.
    13. Nuria Gallego & Carlos Llano, 2014. "The Border Effect and the Nonlinear Relationship between Trade and Distance," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(5), pages 1016-1048, November.
    14. Hassan, Ramin & Loualiche, Erik & Pecora, Alexandre R. & Ward, Colin, 2023. "International trade and the risk in bilateral exchange rates," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(2).
    15. Wessel, Jan, 2019. "Evaluating the transport-mode-specific trade effects of different transport infrastructure types," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 42-57.
    16. Gianluca Orefice & Hillel Rapoport & Gianluca Santoni, 2021. "How Do Immigrants Promote Exports? Networks, Knowledge, Diversity," CESifo Working Paper Series 9288, CESifo.
    17. Haoyuan Ding & Kees G. Koedijk & Chang Li & Tong Qi, 2021. "The internationalisation of Chinese firms: Impact of FDI experience on export performance," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(12), pages 3609-3640, December.
    18. MacDonald, Margaux, 2017. "International capital market frictions and spillovers from quantitative easing," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 135-156.
    19. Clémence Lenoir & Julien Martin & Isabelle Mejean, 2023. "Search Frictions in International Goods Markets," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 21(1), pages 326-366.
    20. Bailey, Michael & Gupta, Abhinav & Hillenbrand, Sebastian & Kuchler, Theresa & Richmond, Robert & Stroebel, Johannes, 2021. "International trade and social connectedness," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • O30 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - General
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cep:cepdps:dp2072. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/discussion-papers/ .

    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.