IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_10881.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Recent Temporal Dynamics in Economics: Empirical Analyses of Annual Publications in Economic Fields

Author

Listed:
  • Lutz Bornmann
  • Klaus Wohlrabe

Abstract

Differences in annual publication counts may reflect the dynamic of scientific progress. Declining annual numbers of publications may be interpreted as missing progress in field-specific knowledge. In this paper, we present empirical results on dynamics of progress in economic fields (defined by JEL codes) based on a methodological approach introduced by Bornmann and Haunschild (2022). We focused on publications that have been published between 2012 and 2021 and identified those fields in economics with the highest dynamics (largest rates of change in paper counts). We found that the field with the largest paper output across the years is ‘Economic Development’. The results reveal that the field-specific rates of changes are mostly similar. However, the two fields ‘Production and Organizations’ and ‘Health’ show point estimators which are clearly higher than the estimators for the other fields. We investigated the publications in ‘Production and Organizations’ and ‘Health’ in more detail.

Suggested Citation

  • Lutz Bornmann & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2024. "Recent Temporal Dynamics in Economics: Empirical Analyses of Annual Publications in Economic Fields," CESifo Working Paper Series 10881, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10881
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10881.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kosnik, Lea-Rachel, 2015. "What have economists been doing for the last 50 years? A text analysis of published academic research from 1960-2010," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 9, pages 1-38.
    2. Katharina Rath & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2016. "Trends in economics publications represented by JEL categories between 2007 and 2013," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(9), pages 660-663, June.
    3. Beatrice Cherrier, 2017. "Classifying Economics: A History of the JEL Codes," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(2), pages 545-579, June.
    4. 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.
    5. Constantin Bürgi & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2022. "The influence of Covid-19 on publications in economics: bibliometric evidence from five working paper series," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(9), pages 5175-5189, September.
    6. Alexandra Baumann & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2020. "Where have all the working papers gone? Evidence from four major economics working paper series," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(3), pages 2433-2441, September.
    7. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2013. "Six Decades of Top Economics Publishing: Who and How?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(1), pages 162-172, March.
    8. Ryan Thomson & Rebecca Mosier & Michelle Worosz, 2023. "COVID research across the social sciences in 2020: a bibliometric approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(6), pages 3377-3399, June.
    9. Johan S. G. Chu & James A. Evans, 2021. "Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 118(41), pages 2021636118-, October.
    10. Kosnik, Lea-Rachel, 2015. "What have economists been doing for the last 50 years? A text analysis of published academic research from 1960-2010," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 9, pages 1-38.
    11. Buehling, Kilian, 2021. "Changing research topic trends as an effect of publication rankings – The case of German economists and the Handelsblatt Ranking," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    12. Lutz Bornmann & Robin Haunschild & Rüdiger Mutz, 2021. "Growth rates of modern science: a latent piecewise growth curve approach to model publication numbers from established and new literature databases," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-15, December.
    13. Lutz Bornmann & Rüdiger Mutz, 2015. "Growth rates of modern science: A bibliometric analysis based on the number of publications and cited references," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(11), pages 2215-2222, November.
    14. Michael A. Kelly & Stephen Bruestle, 2011. "Trend Of Subjects Published In Economics Journals 1969–2007," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(3), pages 658-673, July.
    15. Zhichao Fang & Rodrigo Costas & Wencan Tian & Xianwen Wang & Paul Wouters, 2020. "An extensive analysis of the presence of altmetric data for Web of Science publications across subject fields and research topics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(3), pages 2519-2549, September.
    16. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin, 2022. "Empirical analysis of recent temporal dynamics of research fields: Annual publications in chemistry and related areas as an example," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    17. Ekaterina V. Ilgisonis & Mikhail A. Pyatnitskiy & Svetlana N. Tarbeeva & Artem A. Aldushin & Elena A. Ponomarenko, 2022. "How to catch trends using MeSH terms analysis?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 1953-1967, April.
    18. David Card & Stefano DellaVigna, 2014. "Page Limits on Economics Articles: Evidence from Two Journals," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(3), pages 149-168, Summer.
    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. Lorenz Gschwent & Bjorn Hammarfelt & Martin Karlsson & Mathias Kifmann, 2024. "The Rise of Health Economics: Transforming the Landscape of Economic Research," Papers 2410.06313, arXiv.org.

    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. Zacchia, Giulia, 2016. "Segregation or homologation? Gender differences in recent Italian economic thought," MPRA Paper 72279, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Allen Bellas & Lea-Rachel Kosnik, 2019. "Which leading journal leads? Idea diffusion in economics research journals," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 901-921, September.
    3. Lea†Rachel Kosnik, 2018. "A Survey Of Jel Codes: What Do They Mean And Are They Used Consistently?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 249-272, February.
    4. Kube, Roland & Löschel, Andreas & Mertens, Henrik & Requate, Till, 2018. "Research trends in environmental and resource economics: Insights from four decades of JEEM," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 433-464.
    5. Ali Sina Önder & Sergey V. Popov & Sascha Schweitzer, 2021. "Leadership in Scholarship: Editors’ Appointments and the Profession’s Narrative," Working Papers in Economics & Finance 2021-05, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth Business School, Economics and Finance Subject Group.
    6. Lea Kosnik, 2016. "JEL Codes: What Do They Mean and Are They Used Consistently?," Working Papers 1011, University of Missouri-St. Louis, Department of Economics.
    7. Allen Bellas & Lea-Rachel Kosnik, 2019. "Which leading journal leads? Idea diffusion in economics research journals," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 901-921, September.
    8. Onder, Ali Sina & Popov, Sergey V & Schweitzer, Sascha, 2018. "Leadership in Scholarship: Editors' Influence on the Profession's Narrative," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2018/2, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
    9. Thiago Dumont Oliveira & Marwil J. Dávila-Fernández, 2020. "From modelmania to datanomics? The rise of mathematical and quantitative methods in three top economics journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(1), pages 51-70, April.
    10. Constantin Bürgi & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2022. "The influence of Covid-19 on publications in economics: bibliometric evidence from five working paper series," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(9), pages 5175-5189, September.
    11. Ernest Aigner & Florentin Gloetzl & Matthias Aistleitner & Jakob Kapeller, 2018. "The focus of academic economics: before and after the crisis," ICAE Working Papers 75, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.
    12. Katharina Rath & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2016. "Trends in economics publications represented by JEL categories between 2007 and 2013," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(9), pages 660-663, June.
    13. Josh Angrist & Pierre Azoulay & Glenn Ellison & Ryan Hill & Susan Feng Lu, 2020. "Inside Job or Deep Impact? Extramural Citations and the Influence of Economic Scholarship," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(1), pages 3-52, March.
    14. Buehling, Kilian, 2021. "Changing research topic trends as an effect of publication rankings – The case of German economists and the Handelsblatt Ranking," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    15. Joshua Angrist & Pierre Azoulay & Glenn Ellison & Ryan Hill & Susan Feng Lu, 2017. "Inside Job or Deep Impact? Using Extramural Citations to Assess Economic Scholarship," NBER Working Papers 23698, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Lea-Rachel Kosnik, 2016. "In Tandem Or Out Of Sync? Academic Economics Research And Public Policy Measures," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 34(1), pages 190-202, January.
    17. Brooks, Chris & Schopohl, Lisa, 2018. "Topics and trends in finance research: What is published, who publishes it and what gets cited?," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(6), pages 615-637.
    18. Jaque Herrera, Gabriela & Cárdenas-Retamal, Roberto & Barrales Henriquez, Daniel, 2022. "Tendencias en Publicaciones en Revistas Chilenas de Economía," Documentos de Trabajo 12, Estudios Nueva Economía.
    19. Katharina Rath & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2016. "Recent trends in co-authorship in economics: evidence from RePEc," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(12), pages 897-902, August.
    20. Daniel Levy & Tamir Mayer & Alon Raviv, 2020. "Academic Scholarship in Light of the 2008 Financial Crisis: Textual Analysis of NBER Working Papers," Working Papers hal-02488796, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    scientometrics; bibliometrics; dynamics of research fields; economics; JEL code;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A10 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - General
    • A12 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines
    • A14 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Sociology of Economics

    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:ces:ceswps:_10881. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    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.