IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fiu/wpaper/1101.html

Keeping Up With Fashion: Recent Trends in the Subfields of Study of Doctoral Students in Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Sheng Guo

    (Department of Economics, Florida International University)

  • Jungmin Lee

    (School of Economics, Sogang University)

Abstract

We conduct an analysis of recent trends on the subfields of study that doctoral students in economics choose for their dissertations. By investigating data on the JEL classification codes of dissertations reported by the Journal of Economic Literature from 1991 to 2007, we find that the trends in the subfields of study of doctoral dissertations follow those of articles published at five major general-interest journals (American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, and Review of Economics and Statistics). In particular, the co-movement pattern is salient in subfields such as Microeconomics (D), Health, Education, and Welfare (I), and Economic Development and Growth (O). Our findings suggest that the fashion exhibited in the top-notch research journals is one of the most influential factors when doctoral students choose a subfield.

Suggested Citation

  • Sheng Guo & Jungmin Lee, 2011. "Keeping Up With Fashion: Recent Trends in the Subfields of Study of Doctoral Students in Economics," Working Papers 1101, Florida International University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:fiu:wpaper:1101
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://casgroup.fiu.edu/pages/docs/3501/1301339883_11-01.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2011
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John J. Siegfried, 2026. "Report of the Director, Job Openings for Economists," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 116, pages 822-824, May.
    2. 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.
    3. Laband, David N, 1986. "Article Popularity," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 24(1), pages 173-180, January.
    4. Colander, David, 2003. "The Aging of an Economist," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(2), pages 157-176, June.
    5. John J. Siegfried & Wendy A. Stock, 1999. "The Labor Market for New Ph.D. Economists," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 115-134, Summer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Trends in dissertation topics
      by Wayne Cain in econ trek on 2011-04-20 06:01:00
    2. Are PhD dissertations lagging the research frontier?
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2011-05-11 19:19:00

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Johnson, Marianne & Kovzik, Alexander, 2016. "Teaching comparative economic systems 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union," International Review of Economics Education, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 23-33.

    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. Gallet, Craig A. & List, John A. & Orazem, Peter F., 2004. "Cyclicality and the Labor Market," IZA Discussion Papers 1302, IZA Network @ LISER.
    2. Wendy A. Stock & Lee W. Hansen, 2004. "Ph. D. Program Learning and Job Demands: How Close Is the Match?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 266-271, May.
    3. Bruno Frey, 2006. "How Influential is Economics?," De Economist, Springer, vol. 154(2), pages 295-311, June.
    4. Bruno S. Frey, 2000. "Was Bewirkt die Volkswirtschaftslehre?," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 1(1), pages 5-33, February.
    5. Craig A. Gallet & John A. List & Peter F. Orazem, 2005. "Cyclicality and the Labor Market for Economists," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 72(2), pages 284-304, October.
    6. Lakshmi Balachandran Nair & Michael Gibbert, 2016. "What makes a ‘good’ title and (how) does it matter for citations? A review and general model of article title attributes in management science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1331-1359, June.
    7. Lando, Tommaso & Bertoli-Barsotti, Lucio, 2017. "Measuring the citation impact of journals with generalized Lorenz curves," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 689-703.
    8. Medoff, Marshall H., 2003. "Collaboration and the quality of economics research," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(5), pages 597-608, October.
    9. Fine, Ben, 2002. "Economics Imperialism and the New Development Economics as Kuhnian Paradigm Shift?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 30(12), pages 2057-2070, December.
    10. Chen, Jihui Susan & Liu, Qihong & Billger, Sherrilyn M., 2012. "Where Do New Ph.D. Economists Go? Evidence from Recent Initial Job Placements," IZA Discussion Papers 6990, IZA Network @ LISER.
    11. Timo Boppart & Kevin E. Staub, 2012. "Online accessibility of academic articles and the diversity of economics," ECON - Working Papers 075, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    12. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2011. "Kaderschmieden der Wirtschaft und/oder Universitäten? Der Auftrag der Wirtschaftsuniversitäten und –fakultäten im 21. Jahrhundert," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 12(3), pages 317-337, August.
    13. Bram Wouterse & Karen Wiel & Marc Steeg, 2017. "Income Differences Between PhDs and Masters: Evidence from The Netherlands," De Economist, Springer, vol. 165(4), pages 439-461, December.
    14. William J. Polley, 2015. "The Rhetoric of Opportunity Cost," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 60(1), pages 9-19, May.
    15. David Colander & Tiziana Dominguez & Gail Hoyt & KimMarie McGoldrick, 2009. "How Do Median Graduate Economic Programs Differ from Top-ranked Programs?," Middlebury College Working Paper Series 0913, Middlebury College, Department of Economics.
    16. John Sherwood & Michael Carbajales-Dale & Becky Roselius Haney, 2020. "Putting the Biophysical (Back) in Economics: A Taxonomic Review of Modeling the Earth-Bound Economy," Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 1-20, March.
    17. Bruce J. Caldwell, 1990. "Does methodology matter? : how should it be practiced?," Finnish Economic Papers, Finnish Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 64-71, Spring.
    18. Bordo, Michael & Istrefi, Klodiana, 2023. "Perceived FOMC: The making of hawks, doves and swingers," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 125-143.
    19. Daniel Sutter, 1998. "Calculation of Self-Interest and Constitutional Consensus: The Role of Ideology," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 9(4), pages 323-333, December.
    20. Robert Wade, 2012. "Why Has Income Inequality Remained on the Sidelines of Public Policy for So Long?," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(3), pages 21-50.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • A11 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Role of Economics; Role of Economists
    • A14 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Sociology of Economics
    • A20 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - General
    • J44 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Professional Labor Markets and Occupations

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Economic Logic blog

    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:fiu:wpaper:1101. 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: Sheng Guo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/defiuus.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.