WPS5152 Policy Research Working Paper 5152 U.S. and Them The Geography of Academic Research Jishnu Das Quy-Toan Do Karen Shaines Sowmya Srinivasan The World Bank Development Research Group Poverty and Inequality Team & Human Development and Public Services Team December 2009 Policy Research Working Paper 5152 Abstract Using a database of 76,046 empirical economics papers economics journals, even after the quality of research published between 1985 and 2004 in the top 202 has been partially controlled for through fixed-effects economics journals, the authors report two associations. for the authors' institutional affiliations; the estimates First, per-capita research output on a given country suggest that papers on the US are 2.6 percentage points increases with the country's per capita gross domestic more likely to be published in the top-five journals. This product (GDP). Regressions controlling for data is a large effect because only 1.5 percent of all papers availability and quality in the country, indicators of written about countries other than the US are published governance and the use of English yield an estimated in the top-five journals. The authors speculate about the research-GDP elasticity of 0.37; surprisingly, the interpretations of these facts, and invite further analysis United States (US) is not an outlier in the production and additions to the public release of the database that of empirical research. Second, papers written about the accompanies this paper. US are far more likely to be published in the top five This paper--a product of the Poverty and Inequality Team, and the Human Development and Public Services Team, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the department to analyze the geography of academic research. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The author may be contacted at research@worldbank.org. The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. Produced by the Research Support Team U.S. and Them: The Geography of Academic Research1 Jishnu Das and Quy-Toan Do, with Karen Shaines and Sowmya Srinivasan 1 Das: World Bank and Center for Policy Research, New Delhi; Do: World Bank; Shaines: World Bank and IMF; Srinivasan: World Bank. We thank Liz Braunstein, Zurab Sajaia, Linda Venable and Tatiana Goriainova for assistance in the compilation of the dataset. We are grateful to Abhijit Banerjee, David McKenzie, Rohini Pande, Lant Pritchett, Carolina Sanchez-Paramo, Biju Rao, Tara Vishwanath and Adam Wagstaff for helpful discussions. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund, their affiliated organizations or those of their Executive Directors or the governments they represent. Contact information: Jishnu Das: jdas1@worldbank.org, Quy-Toan Do: qdo@worldbank.org. The dataset and supporting documents are available for download at http://econ.worldbank.org/staff/qdo 1. Introduction Among academic and policy researchers working on countries other than the US, there is a belief that there is too little work on countries outside the US, particularly the poorer ones (see for instance, Bardhan 2003). There is a also a belief that papers written about countries other than the US receive less favorable treatment in the top journals. Some referee reports are indeed memorable for their stance on the relevance of research on low-income countries. For instance, one researcher in a top university shares his/her referee report from a top journal: "There are a number of reasons to be concerned about the potential generalizability and policy relevance of the findings in this paper (...) It is hard to generalize away from this very specific context to speak to the policy debate in developed countries." (Emphasis added) In the case of another referee report, "The editors have examined your paper and have concluded that it is not appropriate for the (...) journal. [M]ost members of the (...) journal's audience will consider your study to be on a very special population. I think your paper as it stands has considerable value and interest to a specialized audience, even if it does not attain the generality we require here." Researchers working on countries other than the US have become so used to such reports and comments like these do not even strike them as out of the ordinary any longer. Imagine instead a referee report that says: "Both referees really enjoyed your paper. The question is important and the empirical results are convincing. However, it is hard to generalize from the specific context of the US to speak to the policy debate in China or India." These anecdotes are, at first glance, consistent with the surprisingly low number of empirical economics publications on countries other than the US in the top 5 economics journals.2 The American Economic Review publishes one paper on India (on average) every 2 years and one paper on Thailand every 20 years. Neither are these numbers particular to this prestigious journal. Over a 20- year span dating from 1985 to 2004, the top 5 economics journals together published 39 papers on India, 65 papers on China, and 34 papers on all of Sub-Saharan Africa. In contrast, they published 2By top 5 economics journals, we henceforth refer to the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economic Studies. 2 2,383 papers on the United States. Do these numbers reflect differences in the overall volume of research on different countries? What is the extent of total research on say Kenya relative to the US? What are the determinants of research output on a given country? To explore these issues, we document some basic facts about the geography of academic research in empirical economics. We build on the description of Ellison (2000) and provide a comprehensive set of tabulations and associations regarding the geography of academic research. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to do so. Our description is based on an article-level database of all empirical economics publications associated with a specific geographical identity, hence excluding theoretical and cross-country studies. More specifically, we record publications from the top 202 journals over the time period 1985-2004.3 Each entry comes with information on authors' affiliations, the journal that the article was published in, the year of publication and the country of study. Combining this dataset with basic country information yields several interesting associations. Out of a total of 76,046 country-specific empirical articles published over the 20-year period from 1985 to 2004, 36,649 papers were produced on the US. Remarkably, the US is not an "outlier". It is on the regression line relating (log) per-capita publications to (log) per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP); excluding the US from the regression does not alter the coefficient on GDP per-capita; 75 percent of the cross-country variation in (per capita) publications is accounted for by this single variable. Because a country like the U.S. is rich with a large population, it reports far more publications than other countries with similar per-capita incomes. Put another way, publications per-capita are very similar in the U.S. to other countries at similar levels of wealth. The role of data in explaining this relationship is assessed by explicitly controlling for measures of country-level measures of data availability and quality and by looking at the patterns of research output following the release of major household surveys. At first glance, the lack of data does not seem to be the main impediment. Looking at publication outlets, 1.5 percent of all papers written about non-US countries are published in the top-5 economics journals compared to 6.5 percent of all papers written about the US. Controlling for authors' institutional affiliation, and hence partially accounting for research 3The top 202 journals are all the journals that appear on one of the rankings provided by Kalaitzidakis et al. (2003) and Kordrzycki and Yu (2006). 3 quality, the difference is lower but still a statistically and qualitatively significant 2.6 percentage points. These results provide an empirical basis for a potential debate on the extent of economic research in different countries. To the extent that optimal economic policy depends on local institutions, culture and geography, country-specific research is important. There is some indication that such a debate may indeed already be under way. The Growth Commission, mandated to understand the sources of growth and appropriate policy, argues in its final report that growth strategies are almost certainly country-specific and perhaps time-specific as well. One introductory passage is worth quoting in full: "Wedded to the goal of high growth, governments should be pragmatic in their pursuit of it. Orthodoxies apply only so far. This report is the product of two years of inquiry and debate, led by experienced policy makers, business people and two Nobel prize-winning academics, who heard from leading authorities on everything from macroeconomic policy to urbanization. If there were just one valid growth doctrine, we are confident that we would have found it."--Growth Commission Report, Introduction, Page 4 Paraphrasing the main finding of the report, it is difficult, for instance, to argue that we know how to accelerate growth in Burundi based on the 5 papers that have been produced on that country between 1985 and 2004. While country-specific reports such as the World Bank's Country Economic Memoranda, the IMF"s Country Reports or UNDP's National Human Development Reports form an important part of the knowledge base on which to draw from, are we satisfied with leaving research on developing country policies entirely to discussions that are not part of a formal referee process? Alternatively, are we confident enough that research on US issues is relevant to the policy debate in Burundi? The results could also help spur discussion about the role and responsibilities of the top journals in the field, which are all US- and UK-based in furthering research on countries other than the US (and to a lesser extent, as we will see, on the UK for the UK-based journals). If for instance, researchers base their choice of research countries on the likelihood of publications in top journals, bias in these outlets could inefficiently allocate greater research effort towards the US. Alternatively, if researchers 4 who continue to work on low-income countries are not rewarded in the publication (and hence tenure) process, there may be efficiency losses in terms of the networks that they have access to. At this stage, our findings consist of tabulations and correlations. Like all work on discrimination, identifying differential treatment in any form is difficult in the absence of experimental studies.4 Furthermore, with sparse information on the availability and quality of datasets from different countries, it is ultimately difficult to rule out the influence of data on the quantity and quality of publications across countries. The findings presented in the paper thus aim only to book-end a debate on why there is more research on some countries than others and on the publication process in the economics discipline, with a focus on empirical studies on and outside the US. The remainder of the paper is as follows. Section 2 is the description of the data. Section 3 documents and discusses the two main findings of the paper. Section 4 concludes. 2. Data Description The main data source is constructed using information on journal articles published in selected 202 economics journals during the period 1985-2004 that were associated with a geographical identifier (thus excluding all theoretical contributions and cross-country empirical work). We used journal rankings proposed by Kalaitzidakis and others (2003) and Kordrzycki and Yu (2006) to finalize the list of journals for inclusion in the database. Ultimately, we selected the 202 economics journals that appeared at least in one of their proposed rankings. Table A1 provides the list of these journals and their rankings according to various citation indices. The large number of journals was chosen partly to ensure that country-specific publications in the dataset reflected the volume of research on the country rather than journal selectivity; of note is that the citation index for the bottom ranked 11 journals is 0, and close to 75 journals have a citation rank less than 1 (that is, the average article in the journal is cited less than once in subsequent research).5 4 Previous work examines whether top economics journals are biased in their publication rates towards authors in the editor's networks as well as how the introduction of double-blind review changed the publishing process (Laband and Piette, 1994, Blank 1991). 5 Kalaitzidakis and others (2003) construct for each journal a citation rank based on citations in 1998 of articles published only in 1994-1998, excluding self-citations and adjusted for impact (influence) and size. Kordrzycki and Yu (2006) provide citations and reference-intensity-adjusted rankings that evaluate a specified set of journals according to influence of journals and influence of journal articles. These rankings take into account citations in economics academic 5 To obtain the files of article records we used the Econlit database provided by EBSCOHost to conduct a field search for each individual journal title, limited to the years 1985 through 2004. 6 If a journal started publication after 1985 we started with the earliest possible date. Every Econlit record is assigned metadata separated into fields. We kept data from the following fields: Author; Author Affiliation; Journal Name; Journal Issue; Descriptor Classification Codes (JEL codes); and Geographical Descriptors. We manually cleaned up the Author-Affiliation field and identified the 100 first academic institutions in addition to three multilateral organizations (IMF, UN and World Bank).7,8 Geographic Descriptors refer to either a specific country, or a generic group of countries. 9 An article was thus assigned to a specific country if the Geographic Descriptor made an explicit mention of the country and it was labeled as a "cross-country study" otherwise. Papers with no associated geographic descriptors were identified and classified in the category of "theoretical contributions". The data were then aggregated up to create a country*year dataset of total publication counts broken down by three types of journals (Top-5, Top-10 journals, all journals) and author affiliations.10 journals as well as citations in other social science and policy journals. In addition, we use the eigen-factor ranking produced as part of a research project at University of Washington. The eigen factor is associated with a specified set of journals and is a measure of the overall value provided by all the articles published in a given journal in a year. The Article Influence is a measure of a journal's influence based on the number of citations per article. Thus, according to the Article Influence ranking, one publication in the American Economic Review will count for 4.9 publications, while one publication in the Journal of Development Economics will count for 1.4 publications. 6 Due to the unavailability of data on some governance indicators and growth variables for the years 2005 and onwards, we restrict all the analysis in this paper for the years 1985-2004. 7 We take the 100 first institutions ranked by the number of pages published provided by Kalaitzidakis et al. (2003). These institutions produced a third of the total number of publications over the period 1985-2004. Affiliations we did not uniquely identify were coded "Other". 8 The codes used to identify the institutional affiliations are open access (http://econ.worldbank.org/staff/qdo/), and we welcome additions to the list of institutions already identified. Above all, we encourage Econlit to code authors, their affiliations, geographic descriptors and other paper attributes in a more standardized fashion. 9 Articles with broadly defined geographical identifiers such as "Selected Countries" or "Europe" were difficult to link to a specific geographical entity. An Econlit representative pointed out that such identifiers usually represent research arising from cross-country empirical techniques. For instance, a continent identifier such as "Europe" would be used for research on a general topic (such as climate change) across a large number of countries in the continent. It is unclear how to deal with cross-country empirical work, and such papers are excluded from this analysis entirely. 10 One limitation of our approach is that important research outlets may still be omitted from this database. Many papers on India, for instance, are published in the Economic and Political Weekly, which does not appear here; neither is research that only appears in reports or books incorporated in this analysis. This database also ignores policy reports and other country specific analyses that are not submitted through the formal academic refereeing system, but with potentially important policy impact such as World Bank's Country Economic Memorandums, IMF Country Reports, or the United Nations Development Program's National Human Development Reports. 6 The publications dataset was then merged with data on standard growth variables, governance indices and release of survey data to arrive at a panel dataset and a country-level dataset on 175 countries for the period 1985 to 2004. Table A2 in the Appendix provides a detailed description of variables and their sources. Summary statistics for the data used in the paper are presented in Table 1. To assess the volume of economics research covered in this paper relative to total economics research, Figure 1 presents a characterization of the nature of research over the 20-year span of our data. We split the set of articles into three groups: theoretical contributions, country-specific case studies, and cross-country analyses. During the 20-year period, the number of publications in all 3 groups increased. Nevertheless, there has been a very small reallocation of research across these 3 groups. There is an increase in the share of cross-country empirical work at the expense of the other two, but theory (40 percent) and single-country empirical papers (50 percent) continue to account for 90 percent of all publications in the field. Therefore, the papers examined here represent the vast majority of empirical work in the field, and almost half the output of the discipline as a whole. 3. Two Facts on the Geography of Academic Research 3.1. Stylized Fact 1: The Research-Wealth Relationship Three figures and a table present the basic facts about empirical economics publications. Figures 2 and 3 and Table 2 use the total number of publications over the period 1985-2004 and relate it to average GDP of countries. Here, we disregard time variation in the data, and take 20-year averages of all variables. Figure 4 returns to the panel aspect of the data and looks at the effect of data dissemination on publications. Figure 2 plots publications aggregated over the 20 years for all countries in the database and by geographical region, as classified by the World Bank (Table A3 in the appendix summarizes the number of publications for every country in our database, and also indicates the number of papers that were published in one of the top 5 economics journal). Countries in different geographical regions are shown in the seven columns--one each for every geographical region. For every region, 7 countries are aligned in descending order of the number of publications over the 20-year period. Taken as a whole, there is a mass of countries with very few publications; a thin layer above this group, which includes China, Canada, Japan and; above these is the United Kingdom with 6,567 publications over the 20 years. Standing out from the group is the United States with 36,649 publications over these 20 years, accounting for the geographical focus in 48 percent of all the economic empirical research during this time. Given U.S dominance, publications by other countries seem insignificant; nevertheless within region comparisons are informative. In Latin America, Mexico reports the highest publications followed by Brazil and Argentina with countries like Venezuela and Bolivia at the very bottom. In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a lot more research is produced on South-Africa than the others, but there is some work on Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria. There are almost no papers published on countries like Togo, Benin, The Central African Republic and Somalia over this period. In South Asia (SA) and the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region, China and India report more publications than all other countries, but twice as much research is produced on China as on India. For those particularly interested in China-India comparisons, the last finding is puzzling since India has always produced good economists, now spread over various U.S. institutions, who could arguably contribute to research on the country. Three potential explanations for this puzzle stem from the weakness of this database as an indicator of knowledge production in all economics sub-disciplines. First, the database does not include theoretical contributions and many Indian-origin economists work on theoretical questions. Second, it could be that while ethnic Chinese researchers generally seem to focus almost totally on China, the same is not true of ethnic Indian researchers. And third, the database does not include research published in journals like the Economic and Political Weekly--a leading outlet for applied empirical work in the country. Despite the caveats, it is worth emphasizing that these two weaknesses should not be overused. There could be a real dearth of applied empirical research in India; particularly since the extent of research was quantitatively similar in India and China in 1985, but has steadily increased in China for the last 20 years while it has stagnated in India. Finally, it is also noteworthy that the total numbers of papers produced are very different across countries at similar levels of income. Much more is produced, for instance, on India than on Mexico. 8 This suggests that for the total publications both GDP per-capita and population matter since India is poorer but significantly larger than Mexico. Deflating the number of publications by country population could yield a clearer relationship between research and wealth, to which we now turn. Figure 3 plots the log of total publications against the log of GDP averaged over the 20-year period for all countries (left), and separated by countries in Latin America, Sub-Saharan African and the Middle East and North Africa (right).11 As is clear from the figure, the richer the country, the more research there is on it. The relationship between the logarithm of the number of publications and logarithm of GDP is roughly linear with a slope close to 1. There is a hint that the US is above this line, but the deviation does not stand out, unlike in Figure 2. Distinguishing countries by region suggests that the research-wealth relationship within geographical regions is similar to that across the world. In most regions--with the exception of the Middle East and North Africa--countries are evenly spread out on the worldwide fitted line relating research to wealth. Countries in the MENA region stand out for their significant downward deviation. All countries in the MENA region report significantly less research than what is expected for their levels of income and within the region, there appears to be little relationship between the research produced on a country and its wealth, measured by GDP. Table 2 presents the regression (OLS) analog of this figure. Publication measures are totals for the period 1985-2004, whereas GDP is averaged over the same period for the 175 countries. We estimate the following equation: Log(Publications)i = a + b.log(GDP per capita)i + c.log(Population)i + ei (1) The description illustrated in Figure 3 is confirmed from the results in Columns 1 and 2. Publications and GDP are positively correlated. The coefficient of log(GDP per capita) is 0.62, and it increases to 0.71 once region fixed-effects are included. There are no scale economies arising from the country's population; a hypothesis confirmed with the formal 2-tests (2 = 1.215, P-value = 11We plot (log) Publications against (log) GDP. This is identical to deflating both variables by population and assuming that research is scale invariant--an assumption explicitly tested in the next section. 9 0.55). Also remarkable is the high explanatory power of this simple specification--GDP per capita and population alone account for 74.2 percent of the variation in the data. In Columns 3-6, we introduce a number of control variables to further understand the relationship between research and wealth. Column 3 introduces a press freedom index as a measure of governance (we also tried other indices such as an index of democracy and a political rights index; the high correlations among these indices imply that the results remain the same); Column 4 introduces a variable for the availability and quality of data which takes the average of the countries scores on data collection, data availability and data/statistical practices compiled by The World Bank; Column 5 introduces a dummy variable for whether the country has a Muslim majority, and Columns 6 and 7 introduce respectively a dummy variable for whether English is an official language and the enrollment in tertiary education as a proxy for country research capacity. The estimated coefficients of wealth and population increase somewhat with the inclusion of regional fixed-effects, but drop when either our measure of governance (press freedom) or data availability/quality are included. Although the "Muslim" dummy and the use of English as an official language are important predictors, they do not mediate the research-wealth relationship of Column 1. Including all the variables together (Column 8) leads to two further differences. First, the "Muslim" dummy reverses signs and is no longer significant, suggesting the low research on Muslim countries is largely due to the correlation between being a Muslim country and poor governance levels or poor data availability. Second, there is a further drop in the GDP coefficient to 0.37, suggesting that the different explanatory variables (in particular, governance and data) have independent effects on the relationship between research and GDP. The inclusion of alternate governance measures and separate measures of data availability and quality had no further effect on this coefficient. Finally, of note is the far lower research produced on Middle East and North Africa (MENA), East Asia and Pacific (EAP) and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) regions relative to their wealth. In contrast, the coefficients are smaller for both South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and are not statistically significant in either case. Although the South Asia result could be anticipated, the SSA result comes as a surprise given our priors on the low level of research on African countries. These results suggest that overall publication numbers for the SSA region are 10 small largely because the countries are poor, and not because these countries have received less attention from the research community once we control for income. Of some interest is the fact that statistically, the US is not an outlier in the volume of research that is produced on it. We examined two possibilities. First, we checked whether the US lay outside the predicted confidence interval (accounting for both the variance of the error and the estimates themselves) from a regression that excluded the US from the estimating equation. Second, we checked for the leverage that the US exerted on the estimated coefficients, by statistically comparing the coefficient vector in regressions with and without the US. Both tests showed that US was no different from other countries once our set of observable characteristics was controlled for; the volume of research for the US lies well within the predicted confidence interval and excluding the US leads to the same coefficient estimates as its inclusion. In other words, a lot more is produced on the US because it is rich and it is big; the natural comparator for the US is all of Europe and here, the volume of research is very similar. Given that the inclusion of data availability/quality reduces the estimated coefficient on GDP, is it likely that better measures of data would drive the coefficient even lower? A priori this could certainly be true: data collection might not be a priority for poorer countries and might also be difficult to carry out given local conditions (infrastructure, local capacity, etc.) To the extent that data alone, instead of GDP, drive publications, we should find some evidence that the release of new high quality data in low-income countries has some impact on the volume of research. We look at the correlation between publications and the release of two highly influential and high quality household surveys--the Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) and the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS)--in countries that reported one such survey sometime between 1985 and 2004. Figure 4 plots average publications against the date of release for the first such survey in the country. Taking an event-studies approach, we construct a variable called "Time to Data Release" that is country and time specific, and defined as the difference between calendar year and the year of data release (the event). The variable takes negative values for dates prior to release, is 0 in the year the data were released and takes positive values thereafter. On the vertical axis we plot the average number of publications, against "Time to Event". As is clear, publications 11 start picking up on the country 3-4 years prior to the release of data. Visually, there is no change in the slope around the time of release. Publications keep increasing till around 9 years after data release and then drop-off (although the drop-off is based on data for fewer countries). Between the very low numbers to the peak, the difference is approximately 5-6 publications a year on the country. We also conducted a formal event study analysis (see appendix for details). The quantitative results from this analysis are consistent with the hypothesis suggested by Figure 4. While it is certainly possible to find small effects (and different specifications could also yield significance) of data release on publications, the formal analysis confirms a strong pre-release trend without a substantive increase in publications after release. Although the lag structure relating publications to data release is not clear and it may be that more sophisticated modeling yields different results, at first glance more data, do not lead to a sustained increase in research on the country. 3.2. Stylized Fact 2: Likelihood of Publication in the Top-5 Journals Our second stylized fact looks at whether research on the US is more likely to be published in a high-quality journal relative to research on other countries. We specifically look at the geographic determinants of publication in one of the top-5 journals in economics, namely Econometrica, the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Review of Economic Studies. The basic fact that the top-5 journals are more likely to be accepting of empirical papers written about the US is shown in Table 3. Column 2 shows that of the 3083 papers published in the top-5 journals between 1985 and 2004, a staggering 2,383 focused on the US. Since around 50 percent of overall research volume is on the US, this represents a substantial premium over what would be expected from an equal probability of selection. Column 2 shows just how large the differences are. Across all countries, roughly 1 out of every 25 papers is accepted into the top-5 journals. The difference between the US and the rest of the world is enormous--6.5 percent of all papers published on the US are in the top-5 journals relative to 1.8 percent of papers from other countries. Of particular interest is that once we move outside the US, there is no difference in the likelihood of publication across the different regions--papers from the UK and other OECD countries (some of 12 which are incredibly data rich) have just as low a likelihood of publication in the top-5 as papers from Sub-Saharan Africa or East Asia and the Pacific. To put this in perspective, assume that a researcher's output is a fairly large 5 papers a year. A researcher who works on the US will get a top- 5 journal publication every 3 years; one who works on non-US countries will have to wait 10 years for such an event to occur. If regular tenure clocks are between 6 to 8 years, this difference could essentially drive the entire evaluation process! Columns 3-4 show some further characteristics of publications in the top-5 by considering the UK- based journals (Econometrica and Review of Economic Studies) separately from the US-based journals (American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics and Journal of Political Economy). Immediately obvious is that the UK based journals place equal emphasis on papers focused on the UK and the US, but the favor is not returned among the US-based journals. For Econometrica and the Review of Economic Studies, a paper from the US or UK is twice as likely to be accepted as papers written about other countries. For the US-based journals, 6 percent of all papers from the US are accepted relative to 1.6 percent of papers from other countries; given the large volume of papers published in these journals compared to the UK-based ones as well as the summaries in Column 2, it comes as no surprise that OECD and UK-focused papers have as low a likelihood of publication in these journals as papers from Africa or South Asia. To examine this relationship within a regression context, we estimated the following equation: Top 5i = a + b.USi + c.UKi + d.Xi + ei (2) where Top5i is an indicator variable that takes the value 1 if article i is published in a top-5 journal; USi = 1 if the article focuses on the US; UKi = 1 if the article focuses on the UK and Xi are the other controls used in the regression relating the volume of research to country characteristics. A causal interpretation of the coefficients b (or c) is equivalent to acknowledging a US (or UK) bias in the publication process. Clearly, the key omitted variable from this equation is the quality of the article. If US-focused papers are generally of higher quality, this would imply greater acceptance in the top-5 journals without any bias on the part of these journals. In particular, if different research institutions have different geographic foci, a positive value for b or c might just reflect the fact that 13 researchers of top research institutions are more prone to work on the US or the UK. The data do indicate such a process; for instance, among the Top-5 ranked economics departments in the world (i.e. Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Princeton and the University of Chicago), 74 percent of all papers published have a US focus, while the figure is only 47 percent for all institutions taken together (Table 3 columns 5-6). To examine this issue further, we propose including a set of dummy variables for the institutions that the authors were affiliated with at the time of publication. The idea is that the institutional affiliations of different authors represent a plausible measure of the quality of the article. To account for co-authors, we introduce the institutional fixed effects in two different ways. Suppose that the quality of the article, Qi = f(IAj,IAk) where IAj is the institutional affiliation of author j and IAk is affiliation of author k. If f(.) is linear, introducing fixed effects for every institutional affiliation will provide coefficient estimates on USi purged of the institutional effects. To account for the possibility that f(.) is non-linear, we also introduce fixed-effects for every institutional affiliation combination in the dataset as an additional check. That is, the co-author pair of Harvard and MIT is treated as an entirely separate institutional combination relative to, say, Harvard and UCLA or UCLA and MIT. Table 4 presents the results from these specifications. There are several noteworthy patterns. Column 1 suggests that (a) there is no relationship between the likelihood of publication in the Top- 5 and the GDP of the country beyond the effect of wealth on the total number of papers published; (b) that there is a small positive association of the likelihood of publication in the Top-5 with the size of the country and; (c) that there is also a (small) positive association with the total volume of research on the country. The lack of a relationship with GDP and the association with population is robust across all specifications. The US and the UK are included as additional explanatory variables in Column 2. Immediately obvious is the large coefficient estimate for the US. With a coefficient estimate of 3.9 percentage points the US effect is large both in terms of its size and its statistical significance. The inclusion of the US also shows that the relationship between the likelihood of being published in the top-5 and the total number of publications is driven entirely by the large volume of research on the US and the much higher likelihood of acceptance for US-focused papers (Column 2). With the inclusion of the US, the effect of aggregate research on the likelihood of 14 publication in a Top-5 journal becomes insignificant and of the wrong sign. Column 3 shows that part of the US effect is indeed driven by the different research focuses of higher ranked economics departments. Introducing institutional affiliation fixed-effects in a linear fashion reduces the coefficient on the US to 2.5 percentage points and substantially increases the explanatory power of the regression by 4 times. Columns 3 and 4 show that introducing institutional combination fixed- effects doubles the explanatory power of the regression but has no further effect on the estimated coefficient for the US. That is, we are now able to proxy for quality in a better way but this further improvement in the quality measure appears to be uncorrelated to the relative preference for US-based journals. Finally, there is no correlation between country governance measures and our measure of data quality and availability--as with the coefficient on the UK, these are precisely estimated zeroes. Columns 5 and 6 show the relative differences between the American and the UK-based journals. We confirm that (a) among the UK-based journals, the premium for UK and US focused articles is identical (and suggests a predicted 150 percent increase in the likelihood of publication) and (b) that among the US-based journals, only articles written about on the US are differentially rewarded in the publication process. If anything, there appears to be a small discount for papers from the UK. Finally, in Table 4 columns 7 and 8, we repeat these specifications for the publishing in the Top-10 journals and find the same patterns.12 There is a 8.8 percentage point increase in likelihood of publication for papers written about the US (relative to a base probability of 2.8 percent for non-US countries) and this coefficient decreases to a still large 5.7 percentage points once institutional fixed effects are introduced. Once again, the explanatory power of the regression increases 4-fold when including the linear-form; combination fixed-effects again increase the explanatory power substantially without any effect on the estimated coefficient. How large is this US effect? Predicting the probability of publication in the top-5 journals after replacing all variables to the means of their sample values shows that 2.8 percent of all non-US papers are accepted in these journals relative to 5.3 percent for the US. These numbers are somewhat more positive than the raw differences but still suggest that with a research output of 5 12The top-10 journals include the Journal of Economic Theory, the Journal of Econometrics, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies. 15 papers a year, it would take under 4 years for a researcher working on the US to produce a top-5 article relative to above 6 years for those working on non-US countries. How we interpret these results depends on our priors. Those who believe that there is no discrimination in the publication process could well argue that the US effect is an upper-bound because further controls for quality would decrease the coefficient---perhaps to zero. Note though, that the opposite may also be true. Suppose that researchers are placed in the top ranked economics departments only if they have a minimum number of top-5 publications. Then, if our prior is that there is discrimination in the top-5 (and top-10) journals, it must be the case that researchers working on non-US countries in the top-ranked institutes produce higher quality papers than their colleagues who work on the US. In this case, the institutional fixed effects produce a lower-bound of the US difference relative to the raw correlations. Regardless of our judgments of what these coefficients imply, these associations and correlations may be helpful in understanding the publication process in economics and the potentially differential rewards for academic research around the world. 4. Conclusions All we have done is present some facts. The correlations with GDP may be useful because they present country-specific applied economic research in a framework familiar to many. The differences in the volume of research were eye-opening for the authors and we may well wonder what the basis of economic policies will be in the 20 poorest countries, where 3 papers per country are written every 2 years (and 1 paper per year per country if we exclude Ethiopia and Tanzania). That these differences are driven to a large extent by the income level of the country is particularly problematic since a lot of the research on low-income countries is done by researchers outside the country, rather than in local institutions. Therefore while it is understandable that other outcomes, such as health and education, have a demonstrated association with country income (largely as a function of the country's own systems); there is no good explanation for why research, which is driven at least partially by non-local institutions, should suffer similarly. If we believe that there is some link between good economic policy and country-specific research, the low volume of research on poor countries is a cause for concern. Disciplines such as anthropology have been through an epistemological debate on the relative benefits of area-specific versus "general" research, and have 16 come down strongly on the importance of the former. To our knowledge, there has been less such debate in the economics discipline and these results (and the accompanying database) present one starting point for such a conversation. The results on the relative likelihood of publication in the top-5 journals may also have efficiency implications. The results confirm the high premium that US-focused papers command in such journals. They also suggest that this bias favors the US in particular rather than "rich countries" in general. Papers from the UK and other OECD countries, excluding the US, have precisely the same likelihood of publication as those from India or Vietnam. Nevertheless, the potential bias against non-US countries may have more pernicious implications for low-income countries. This is because, relative to OECD countries, it is likely that a larger fraction of research on low-income countries is conducted in the US rather than in the country itself. Therefore, researchers who would like to work on Vietnam but are based in the US have to choose their country carefully before starting work. As a consequence of potential bias, they may change the country focus of their research (to the US, if they are rational) or decrease the marginal investment in quality and aim for lower ranked journals. As one professor from a top-ranked department told us, after umpteen rejections for work on a low- income country (and ultimately 2 top journal publications) he decided to switch to US-focused research. Following the switch, both the papers that he has written since were accepted in the first top journal that he submitted them to! For OECD countries, local researchers may be less sensitive to bias in the top-5 journals and therefore the efficiency implications could be less severe. We hope that there will be further additions to this database from interested researchers (e.g. looking at networks of authors or the effect of money for research on outcomes). An open question is how knowledge that has high marginal value for a particular country (the first poverty estimate for Togo where none existed) but low marginal value for the discipline (been there, done that for many other countries) should be disseminated. Equally importantly, the question of whether there is bias in the top journals is critical for the discipline. Hiring decisions, visibility and the quality of subsequent work all depend on this crucial acceptability. A bias as large as the one we document would be unacceptable. 17 References Bardhan, P. (2003), "Journal Publication in Economics: A View from the Periphery", Economic Journal 113(488): 332-7. Blank, R. (1991), "The Effects of Double-Blind versus Single-Blind Reviewing: Experimental Evidence from the American Economic Review." American Economic Review 81(5): 1041-1067. Ellison, G. (2000), "The Slowdown of the Economics Publishing Process", unpublished MIT. Kalaitzidakis, P., T. Mamuneas, and T. Stengos, (2003). "Rankings of Academic Journals and Institutions in Economics." Journal of the European Economic Association 1(6): 1346-1366. Kordrzycki, Y. and P. Yu (2006), "New Approaches to Ranking Economic Journals", Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Working Paper 05-12. Laband, D.N. and M.J. Piette (1994), "Favoritism versus Search for Good Papers: Empirical Evidence Regarding the Behavior of Journal Editors", Journal of Political Economy 102(1): 194-203. 18 Appendix A1. List of journals and publication weights See Table A1 A2. Macroeconomic variables See Table A2 A.3. Breakdown of publications by country See Table A3 A.4. Data release and research output: an event study As in the figure, we define an "event" as the release of the first LSMS or DHS dataset in the country in our dataset. Calendar time is then calibrated with respect to the event data. Finally, we create an indicator variable, "Post-Event" that takes the value 1 for all calendar years after the event date. We then estimate the following specification: Log(Pub)it = a + b.Post-Eventit + c.Time to Eventit + d.Post-Eventit * Time-to-Eventit + vi + Yeart + eit (A1) The coefficient on Post-Event captures the jump in the year of data release; that on Time-to-Event captures the publication trend over time (defined with respect to the event itself) while the interaction term captures the additional change in trend as a result of the data release. We restrict the sample of countries to Non-OECD and non-high-income countries and to a 10-year period for each country after the release of data. Table A4 presents the regression analog of this figure using a difference-in-difference specification that accounts for country and time fixed-effects. The main econometric problem in describing these associations is how to deal with zero publications for some country-year combinations; given the exploratory nature of these results, we opt instead for a set of piecemeal specifications with fewer parametric assumptions. These specifications, ordered in descending order of optimism, estimate Equation (A1) for the log of publications conditional on non-zero publications (zero publication 19 country-years are dropped) in Panel A; for the probability of a publication in Panel B and the linear non-log specification in Panel C. All the panels follow the same structure--Columns 1 and 2 define the event-date as the "true" date of data release. Given lags in the production of research and its publication, Columns 3 and 4 assume that the event date is 1 year after the date of data release and Columns 5 and 6 post the event date as 2 years after data release. The basic result suggests (a) that there is no jump in the number of publications with the release of data, but defining the event date as 1 or 2 years after the release of data shows a jump of 27 percent and 22 percent respectively (Panel A); (b) no change in the probability of publication if the event date is the date of data release but a significant decline of 3.7 percent if the event date is defined as 2 years after release (Panel B) and; (c) aggregating the probability of a publication and the number of publications using a simple linear framework, no association in levels or trends between the volume of research and the release of these data. All specifications do show a positive pre-release trend, suggesting that these data were collected in countries where research volume was increasing prior to the data collection. 20 Figure 1: Trends in publications (1985-2005) A Broad Classification of Publications 0 1985-2005 00 10 Number of Publications 00 80 00 60 00 40 00 20 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 Publication Year Cross-Country Only Single-Country Only Theory Only Notes: The figure shows the total number of publications in the top 202 journals, broken down into three categories: Cross-country studies, Single-country studies and Theoretical studies Figure 2: Publications by Country and Region Country Specific Research Across Geographical Subdivisions USA 10 Log Publications (1985 - 2004) GBR CAN 8 JPN DEU CHN RUS AUS IND NLD FRA ZAF SWE MEX IDN ITA ESP CZE DNK BRA IRL 6 ARG POL NOR ISR GRC PHL NZL HUN FIN TUR THA CHL BGD KEN CHE BEL HKG MYS PAK GHA NGA SGP AUT COL LKA TZA ZWE EGY PRT BGR PER CIV ETH SVK SVN VNM UKR ECU ROM JAM CRI BOL NIC NPL UGA MWI CMR ZMB 4 VEN HND CUB BWA SDN BFA IRN EST GTM URY DOM MDG MAR PNG SEN MOZ TUN SAU ALB KAZ KGZ SLV PRY MLI KWT CYP TTO LTU YUG HRV UZB BLR HTI NER NAM BRB GEO GUY ZAR GMB IRQ DZA JOR ISL MNG FJI LVA MKD PAN GIN MUS RWA BEN MDA SWZ LSO SLE 2 LAO KHM ARM AFG LBN LUX MMR TJK BIH TKM BLZ SUR SOM AGO ARE SLB TON BDI TGO COG SYR TMP AZE LCA BTN LBY BHR WSM VUT SYC TCD ERI GAB GNB OMN QAT ABW MLT 0 KIR VCT MDV LBR MRT STP CAF YEM BHS SMR BRN EAP ECA LAC SA SSA MENA OECD* 8 Region Notes: This figure shows the total volume of (log) publications for every country between 1985 and 2004, separated by 7 country-groups. The classification of countries into separate regions follows The World Bank country classification. *: The variable OECD refers to the 30 OECD countries + other HighIncomeNon-OECD countries (WB classification) + 5 other UpperMiddleIncomeCountries (WB classification). The complete list of country names and classifications are included in Table A3. Figure 3: The Research Wealth Relationship The Research-Wealth Relationship Across Geographical Subdivisions All Countries Eastern Europe East Asia Pacific USA 2 4 6 8 10 2 4 6 8 10 2 4 6 8 10 GBR Log Publications Log Publications Log Publications CAN CHN JPN RUS DEU AUS RUS CHN IND NLD FRA SWE ZAF MEX ITA IDN CZE ARG ESP IRL DNK BRA IDN PHL POL NZL NOR ISR GRC HUNFINBEL CHL TUR KEN BGD THA POL HUN TUR PHL MYS CHE TZA SVKSGP ZWE NGA COL HKG GHA BGRPAK AUT THA MYS CIV LKA EGY ETH VNM PRT BGR UKR SVK MWI UGASDN PER IRN NIC CRI SVN UKR BWA ECU VEN ZMB CMR ROM JAM BOL NPL ROM VNM HND BFAESTTUN MOZ GTM MDG URY PNG DOM SEN ALB SLV MLI TTO BLRMAR SAU PNG HTI JOR KAZ BRBGEO LTUKWT KGZ PRYUZB NER CYP YUG DZA GMB SWZ NAMLVA HRV ALB LTU KGZ KAZ HRV YUG BLR GEO UZB BEN ISL GUYFJI MUS ZAR IRQ RWAGIN MNG MKD SLEARM PAN MDA LSO LAOAFG LUX MDA LVA MKD FJI MNG BLZ TJKTKM LBN ARE SOM KHM SUR BIH ARM BIH TJKTKM LAO KHM TON BTN BDI COG AGO LBY SLB TGO AZE SYR SLB TON TMP TMP VUTLCA TCD BHR GNBSYC MLT QAT WSM ERI ABW GAB OMN AZE VUT WSM 0 0 0 KIR STP MDV MRT BHS YEM VCT LBRCAF SMR BRN KIR 15 20 25 30 15 20 25 30 15 20 25 30 Log GDP Log GDP Log GDP Country Scatter Worldwide Fit Country Scatter Worldwide Fit Country Scatter Worldwide Fit Latin America Middle East and North Africa South Asia 2 4 6 8 10 2 4 6 8 10 2 4 6 8 10 Log Publications Log Publications Log Publications IND MEX ARG BRA CHL BGD PAK COL PER EGY LKA JAM ECU VEN BOL NIC CRI NPL HNDDOMGTM URY SLV TUNMAR IRN GUY HTI PRY JOR DZA IRQ PAN LBN BLZ SUR AFG LCA SYR LBY BTN OMN 0 0 0 VCT YEM MDV 15 20 25 30 15 20 25 30 15 20 25 30 Log GDP Log GDP Log GDP Country Scatter Worldwide Fit Country Scatter Worldwide Fit Country Scatter Worldwide Fit OECD Countries and other high-income countries Sub-Saharan Africa USA 2 4 6 8 10 2 4 6 8 10 GBR Log Publications Log Publications CAN JPN DEU AUS NLD FRA CZE SWE IRLNORMEX ITA DNK ESP ZAF ISR POL GRC NZL TUR HUNFINBEL HKG SGP AUTCHE KEN SVK PRT GHA ZWE NGA TZA CIV SVN ETH MWI UGASDN EST SAU BFA CMR ZMB BWA MDG SEN MOZ MLI BRB CYP KWT TTO ISL NER GMB SWZ NAM ZAR LSO SLERWA GIN BENMUS LUX ARE SOM BHR BDI COG AGO TGO MLT QAT ABW SYC GNB ERI TCD GAB 0 0 BRN SMR BHS STP MRT CAF LBR 15 20 25 30 15 20 25 30 Log GDP Log GDP Country Scatter Worldwide Fit Country Scatter Worldwide Fit Notes: This figure shows the estimated relationship between log publications and log GDP for all countries (top left) and 7 country-groups. The classification of countries into separate regions follows The World Bank country classification. All developing countries are classified into geographical regions, and a separate category is created for OECD countries and other high-income and upper-middle income countries as classified by the World Bank. The figure suggests a close relationship between (log) publications and (log) GDP that holds within as well as across regions. The notable exception is countries in the Middle East and North Africa region, where the estimated elasticity is clearly different. Figure 4: Data Release and Publication Trends Publications and publication count Table A4 Panel A: ConditionalData Release 15 Total Publications 10 5 0 -20 -10 0 10 20 Time to Data Release The year of data release is defined as the first year that data from either a Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) or Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) became available in the public domain. Following an event-studies approach, time is calibrated with respect to the year of data release. For instance, if 1990 was the year of data release, 1985 is treated as -5 and 1995 as +5. The figure excludes all countries which did not experience a change in status between 1985 and 2004--these are countries where some data was available prior to 1984 or countries where no data was available by 2004. Furthermore, we disregard multiple data release events (a DHS was released 2 years after an LSMS) in this figure, an issue handled separately in the regression section. Table 1: Summary Statistics N average st.dev min max Total number of publications 178 427.22 2,810.87 1 36,649 Total number of publications by Multilaterals 178 11.96 52.49 0 669 Total number of publications by top 5 universities 178 21.04 207.56 0 2,767 Total number of publications in top 10 journals 178 32.94 357.38 0 4,766 Total number of publications in top 10 journals by Multilaterals 178 0.68 6.39 0 85 Total number of publications in top 10 journals by top 5 universitites 178 6.19 70.96 0 947 Total number of publications in top 5 journals 178 17.32 178.79 0 2,383 Total number of publications in top 5 journals by Multilaterals 178 0.43 3.70 0 49 Total number of publications in top 5 journals by top 5 universitites 178 4.18 46.54 0 621 Total number of publications in EMA and RES 178 1.69 14.25 0 187 Total number of publications in AER, JPE and QJE 178 15.63 164.70 0 2,196 Weighted number of publications 178 4,506.03 43,858.86 0 583,674 Weighted number of publications by Multilaterals 178 115.66 837.22 0 11,081 Weighted number of publications by top 5 universities 178 623.69 6,962.49 0 92,911 GDP per capita 195 10,888.67 47,103.40 144 596,111 Population (millions) 205 27,207,496.21 108,664,536.88 1,400 1,189,547,874 Enrollment in tertiary education 205 58,483.57 200,206.64 0 2,002,384 English is an official language (1:yes,0:no) 215 0.24 0.43 0 1 Muslim majority dummy variable 215 0.21 0.41 0 1 Press freedom index 192 45.59 24.10 7 97 Political right index 193 3.59 2.06 1 7 Civil rights index Civil 193 3 63 3.63 1 76 1.76 1 7 Autocracy-Democracy index 159 1.53 6.56 -10 10 Level of freedom 191 1.15 0.73 0 2 Perception of corruption 158 4.06 2.13 1 9 East Asia and Pacific (EAP) 215 0.19 0.39 0 1 Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) 215 0.25 0.43 0 1 Latin America and Caribeans (LAC) 215 0.20 0.40 0 1 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) 215 0.10 0.30 0 1 South Asia (SA) 215 0.04 0.19 0 1 Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) 215 0.22 0.42 0 1 OECD country 206 0.11 0.32 0 1 Other high-income country (non OECD) 206 0.15 0.35 0 1 DHS or LSMS ever produced (1:yes,0:no) 215 0.40 0.49 0 1 Date of release of first DHS/LSMS (year) 215 6,796.42 3,931.49 1,985 9,999 Overall Data Quality (0:poor;100:good) 140 69.34 20.95 9 100 Data Collection Index (0:poor;100:good) 140 69.50 25.62 0 100 Data Availability Index (0:poor;100:good) 140 76.41 16.39 18 100 Data Statistical Practice (0:poor;100:good) 140 62.14 28.13 0 100 Table 2: The Research-Wealth Relationship: determinants of research intensity Dependent variable: Log total number of publications (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) Independent variables Logarithm of per capita GDP 0.617*** 0.711*** 0.502*** 0.583*** 0.683*** 0.689*** 0.712*** 0.366*** (0.053) (0.057) (0.064) (0.083) (0.057) (0.053) (0.060) (0.081) Logarithm of population 0.906*** 0.914*** 0.938*** 0.834*** 0.916*** 0.937*** 0.914*** 0.876*** (0.035) (0.031) (0.033) (0.057) (0.031) (0.029) (0.034) (0.069) Press freedom index -0.027*** -0.021*** (0.004) (0.005) Overall Data quality index 0.027*** 0.016*** (0.005) (0.006) Country has a Muslim majority -0.497** 0.219 (0.241) (0.214) English is an official language 0.785*** 0.728*** (0.175) (0.183) Logarithm of total enrollment in tertiary education -0.000 0.000 (0.000) (0.000) East Asia and Pacific (EAP) -1.027*** -0.730** -1.178*** -1.018*** -0.730*** -1.032*** -0.664* (0.277) (0.325) (0.273) (0.299) (0.220) (0.322) (0.365) Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) -1.459*** -1.071*** -1.732*** -1.395*** -0.788*** -1.466*** -0.772** (0.266) (0.314) (0 211) (0.211) (0.284) (0.266) (0.330) (0.390) Latin America and Carribean (LAC) -1.311*** -1.026*** -1.280*** -1.327*** -0.750*** -1.317*** -0.585 (0.301) (0.340) (0.271) (0.317) (0.272) (0.357) (0.400) Middle East and North Africa (MENA) -3.014*** -1.789*** -2.404*** -2.557*** -2.313*** -3.022*** -1.360*** (0.298) (0.382) (0.298) (0.404) (0.287) (0.346) (0.479) South Asia (SA) -1.247*** -0.653* -0.923*** -1.072*** -0.794** -1.255*** -0.553 (0.360) (0.388) (0.338) (0.365) (0.390) (0.411) (0.560) Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) -1.070*** -0.626* -0.805** -0.983*** -0.761*** -1.077*** -0.569 (0.340) (0.365) (0.342) (0.360) (0.275) (0.384) (0.421) Constant -15.281*** -14.700*** -12.727*** -14.389*** -14.487*** -15.591*** -14.707*** -12.603*** (0.778) (0.937) (0.936) (1.232) (0.946) (0.865) (0.951) (1.202) Number of observations 173 173 169 136 173 173 173 136 Adjusted R2 0.742 0.810 0.845 0.818 0.815 0.829 0.809 0.851 Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses. ***, **, and * indicate that the coefficients are statistically significant at a 1, 5, and 10 percent level, respectively. Definition of the variables available in Table A2 Table 3: Publication breakdown by regions and institutional affiliation All Affiliations Top 5 Universities All journals Top 5 journals Econometrica/REStud AER/JPE/QJE All journals Top 5 journals Econometrica/REStud AER/JPE/QJE (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) All countries 76,046 3,083 300 2,783 3,745 744 67 677 UK, US and the rest of the world United States 36,649 2,383 187 2,196 2,767 621 53 568 United Kingdom 6,567 102 32 70 78 7 0 7 All countries but US, UK 32,830 598 81 517 900 116 14 102 Regional breakdown East Asia and Pacific 8,272 152 12 140 303 29 2 27 Europe and Central Asia 19,285 292 65 227 370 47 4 43 Latin America and the Caribbean 2,800 63 7 56 102 9 1 8 Middle East and North Africa 741 23 2 21 27 4 0 4 South Asia 1,710 50 12 38 74 16 4 12 Sub-Saharan Africa 2,440 34 5 29 54 8 1 7 OECD countries 60,462 2,783 266 2,517 3,169 674 60 614 High Income - Non OECD countries 1,292 26 2 24 44 5 0 5 Notes: The top 5 economics journals consist of Econometrica, the American Economic Review, The Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economic Studies. The top 5 universitites refer to Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and the University of Chicago Table 4: Geographic determinants of publication in a top 5 economics journal Dependent variable: Article is published in a top economics journal (1: yes, 0: no) Econometrica/R Top 5 economic Journals AER/JPE/QJE Top 10 Journals EStud (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) Independent variables: United States 0.039*** 0.025*** 0.024*** 0.003*** 0.021*** 0.088*** 0.057*** (0.005) (0.003) (0.003) (0.001) (0.003) (0.006) (0.003) United Kingdom -0.004 -0.002 -0.003 0.002*** -0.005** -0.005 -0.002 (0.003) (0.002) (0.002) (0.001) (0.002) (0.005) (0.002) Logarithm of total number of publications (1985-2004) 0.005* -0.002 -0.001 -0.002 -0.001*** -0.001 -0.006* -0.004** (0.003) (0.002) (0.001) (0.001) (0.000) (0.001) (0.003) (0.002) Logarithm of per capita GDP 0.002 0.002 0.001 0.001 -0.001** 0.002** 0.008*** 0.005*** (0.003) (0.002) (0.001) (0.001) (0.000) (0.001) (0.002) (0.002) Logarithm of population 0.009** 0.007*** 0.004*** 0.004*** 0.001** 0.004*** 0.011*** 0.006*** (0.004) (0.002) (0.001) (0.001) (0.000) (0.001) (0.002) (0.001) Press freedom index -0.001** -0.000 -0.000 -0.000 -0.000* 0.000 -0.000 -0.000 (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) Overall Data quality index -0.001** 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000*** -0.000 -0.000 0.000 (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) Constant -0.090* -0.101*** -0.067*** -0.020 -0.003 -0.017 -0.195*** -0.044 (0.051) (0.031) (0.019) (0.019) (0.008) (0.017) (0.045) (0.027) Instituional affiliation "fixed-effects" no no yes no no no no no fixed-effects Institutional affiliation combination fixed effects no no yes yes yes yes no yes Number of observations 73,969 73,969 73,969 73,969 73,969 73,969 73,969 73,969 Adjusted R2 0.014 0.016 0.067 0.112 0.121 0.102 0.037 0.158 Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses. ***, **, and * indicate that the coefficients are statistically significant at a 1, 5, and 10 percent level, respectively. Definition of the variables available in Table A2. Accounting for Institutional affiliation "fixed-effects" consist of adding a set of institutional affiliation dummy variables; institutional affiliation combination fixed effects allow for each combination of co-author affiliations to be controlled for. Table A1: Rankings of Economics Journals according to various ranking schemes Journal Name jeea j_in pa_in wj_in wpa_in j_all pa_all wj_all wpa_all j_pol pa_pol wj_pol wpa_pol eigen artinfl American Economic Review 100 100 27.1 46.8 26.64 20.86 29.26 19.22 19.01 100 34.52 100 26.92 Econometrica 96.78 79.86 41.37 28.74 31.74 9.62 44.17 7.34 12.71 30.95 28.83 31.12 17.47 0.00279 0.44 Journal of Political Economy 65.19 74.63 58.9 36.16 59.39 9.03 63.87 5.55 37.25 24.35 51.13 39.66 35.4 0.11 4.9 Journal of Economic Theory 58.76 42.13 12.83 10.57 6.63 2.86 13.34 1.9 3.64 1.84 2.61 4.6 2.5 0.01 0.6 Quarterly Journal of Economics 58.11 88.4 77.89 44.19 83.2 28.84 86.12 23.11 72.51 56.58 100 70.22 81.95 0.000579 0.1 Journal of Econometrics 54.91 35.86 15.53 15.43 14.03 8.24 16.97 5.83 3.2 11.8 17.34 19.5 11.23 Econometric Theory 45.85 11.49 6.57 4.38 5.08 0.89 6.74 0.38 0.75 0.89 1.98 1.69 0.78 0.00616 0.23 Review of Economic Studies 45.15 40.42 37.06 14.09 27.63 4.78 38.18 2.81 16.29 7.42 21.34 13.8 14.97 0.00159 0.06 Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 38.41 17.55 14.87 7.4 13.18 1.98 15.45 1.05 3.57 7.55 18.04 14.02 13.5 Journal of Monetary Economics 36.41 33.31 23.22 13.93 24.06 2.6 23.86 1.12 5.93 8.18 26.77 18.16 23.41 0.000522 0.16 Games and Economic Behavior 35.49 22.62 8.52 5.45 4.1 1.99 9.06 2.28 2.56 1.19 2.89 3.36 4.03 Journal of Economic Perspectives 34.26 31.8 24.68 12.72 23.28 11.69 26.28 7.37 32.26 48.59 38.52 31.8 31.53 Review of Economics and Statistics 28.02 31.52 17.53 13.6 16.37 7.09 18.23 3.97 6.98 14.14 17.45 22.58 14.45 0.00598 3.39 European Economic Review 23.76 28.73 12.04 11.44 11.8 3.01 12.35 1.41 5.73 11.75 15.81 21.61 15.51 0.000318 0.12 International Economic Review 23.04 26.6 17.44 8.24 12.78 2.14 17.78 0.88 3.27 3.44 11.6 6.23 8.71 0.003 0.53 Economic Theory 22.43 18.11 6.5 4.92 3.71 1.06 6.66 0.43 1.17 1.05 2.06 2.17 2.3 Journal of Human Resources 21.34 9.14 10.73 3.02 6.88 13.3 11.59 11.36 5.04 14.69 19.62 16.38 9.53 Economic Journal 20.71 24.78 12.08 8.83 10.62 4.8 12.48 2.94 8.14 40.39 20.7 27 19.97 0.00614 0.86 Journal of Public Economics 19.77 24.73 10.66 8.46 7.6 7.03 11.05 4.57 6.94 17.51 13.77 21.68 9.47 Journal of Economic Literature 18.78 35.39 66.32 14.73 62.51 10.22 72.68 6.57 80.03 32.73 87.48 32.68 51.47 0.000919 0.31 Economics Letters 18.73 15.4 2.4 5.03 1.79 1.81 2.48 0.88 0.76 3.81 2.46 8.02 1.88 Journal of Applied Economics 16.59 8.07 8.54 2.9 7.03 0.88 8.7 0.36 1.95 3 13.75 6.47 11.27 0.000729 0.13 Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 14.54 13.87 6.47 6.95 6.43 0.9 7.47 0.6 1.21 1.58 2.9 2.8 1.72 0.000339 0.11 Journal of Labor Economics 12.76 10.44 12.68 3.77 8.66 2.14 12.75 1.33 9.66 10.32 19.4 14.96 7.37 0.000713 0.24 Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 11.85 6.17 5.69 1.39 2.3 2.24 5.54 1.1 3.86 7.77 10.52 6.79 2.41 0.000128 0.05 RAND Journal of Economics 11.44 20.54 19.69 8.57 16.75 4.39 21.68 7.02 29.8 14.64 23.97 20.67 22.64 0.000145 0.06 Scandinavian Journal of Economics 10.66 4.3 4.67 1.34 3.13 0.62 4.73 0.31 1.02 1.16 3.97 2.27 3.06 Journal of Financial Economics 9.89 78.69 63.64 76.92 97.28 3.94 84.05 2.81 35.42 8.34 18.48 17.34 18.37 0.000232 0.07 Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 8.35 3.19 3.07 1.1 2.3 0.96 3.17 0.51 0.54 2.74 4.78 4.44 1.68 0.01 0.78 Journal of International Economics 7.84 24.8 16.2 9.66 16.47 2.54 16.61 1.14 4.59 6.92 20.97 12.61 13.75 0.01 1.26 Journal of Mathematical Economics 7.64 7.75 3.99 1.24 1.19 0.4 4.17 0.17 0.36 0 0 0 0 0.06 6.77 Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 7.05 9.13 3.36 2.86 2.3 2.64 3.85 4.72 3.35 0.87 1.89 2.4 2.69 Social Choice and Welfare 6.89 6.88 3.87 1.03 1.04 0.44 4.87 0.11 0.5 0.16 0.13 0.13 0.01 0.00393 0.78 American Journal of Agricultural Economics 6.19 4.11 1.47 0.84 0.51 3.3 1.49 2.26 0.53 10.18 3.54 13.36 0.59 0.000935 0.24 International Journal of Game Theory 6.09 6.31 4.1 1.21 1.37 0.38 4.25 0.17 0.91 0.24 0.88 0.61 0.56 0.00235 0.95 Economic Inquiry 6.03 4.84 3.69 1.55 2.52 2.47 3.89 3.1 9.3 6.01 6.85 7.72 4.99 0.00233 0.78 World Bank Economic Review 5.68 3.84 7.31 1.31 6.16 1.13 7.97 0.67 2.45 5.94 13.3 8.83 4.98 0.00541 0.76 Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 5.58 3.89 4.36 1.08 2.51 7.82 6.76 9.38 40.84 1.52 3.11 2.01 0.55 0.03 3.09 Journal of Development Economics 5.5 10.64 6.56 3.99 6.26 2.13 6.72 1.17 3.39 14.05 12.53 22.98 8.2 0.000574 0.11 Land E L d Economics 5.14 5 14 2.92 2 92 3. 3 33 0 51 0.51 1.05 1 05 1.7 17 3.32 3 32 0 83 0.83 1.89 1 89 6 79 6.79 8 59 8.59 5 88 5.88 1.46 1 46 0.00334 International Monetary Fund Staff Papers 5.12 3.71 7.27 1.43 7.4 0.46 7.34 0.21 2.6 2.53 12.14 4.8 12.48 0.000556 0.12 Canadian Journal of Economics 5.09 8.35 3.93 2.92 2.95 1.01 3.9 0.43 1.21 6.05 4.8 5.6 4.14 0.00735 0.62 Public Choice 4.95 3.19 1.56 0.98 1.34 0.49 1.92 0.29 4.18 1.26 3.43 4.15 5.58 0.00385 0.89 Theory and Decision 4.9 0.000598 0.32 Economica 4.56 3.59 3.44 0.95 1.99 0.8 3.49 1.08 3.39 1.1 3.04 1.62 1 0.01 0.45 Journal of Urban Economics 4.37 5.29 5.18 1.8 3.2 1.18 5.25 0.61 1.94 12.51 13.96 15.77 7.32 0.00494 0.81 International Journal of Industrial Organization 4.26 6.61 3.68 2.37 2.84 0.64 3.86 0.35 3.09 1.88 4.53 4.62 4.14 Journal of Law Economics and Organization 4.05 0.00218 0.55 Journal of Law and Economics 3.9 5.55 9.26 3.48 10.43 2.15 11.57 1.44 100 7.9 16.97 9.63 12.52 0.00406 1.08 National Tax Journal 3.87 5.18 4.56 1.65 3.26 3.48 4.88 1.26 9.59 6.26 9.77 6.54 5.73 6.03E-05 0.0083 Journal of Industrial Economics 3.85 6.67 9.84 3.01 9.1 0.76 10.74 0.55 11.41 2.4 14.65 6.23 19.73 Journal of Economic History 3.78 5.26 4.7 2.02 4.27 0.67 5.22 0.4 2.01 0.88 3.56 1.74 2.22 0.00267 0.51 Oxford Economic Papers 3.71 3.05 3.75 0.96 2.6 0.55 3.81 0.32 1.11 2.92 4.49 4.54 1.42 0.00385 1.31 Journal of Comparative Economics 3.36 1.3 2.66 0.84 3.95 0.21 2.78 0.12 1.98 2.11 9.82 5.77 15.33 World Development 3.22 2.46 0.94 0.7 0.56 7.27 1.49 5.58 0.45 37.53 7.31 15 2.06 0.00381 0.4 Southern Economic Journal 3.09 3.55 4.98 1.15 3.76 1.98 4.9 2.09 5.42 3.84 12.37 6.21 13.41 0.03 2.33 Explorations in Economic History 2.97 1.51 3.03 0.45 1.83 0.21 3.08 0.08 0.59 0.26 2.68 0.46 0.71 Economic Record 2.93 0.36 0.6 0.12 0.51 0.06 0.59 0.03 1.37 0.37 2.03 0.7 2.33 0.00147 0.45 Journal of Banking and Finance 2.62 9.75 5.47 8.28 8.09 0.57 7.05 0.25 2.08 0.96 1.92 1.88 2.2 0.00191 0.75 Contemporary Economic Policy 2.42 0.71 1.03 0.24 0.85 1.61 1.04 2.39 0.8 0.34 2.45 0.96 3.29 Journal of Population Economics 2.41 1.62 1.99 0.37 1.06 1.18 2.17 1.26 1.49 3.14 4.76 4.69 1.35 0.000449 Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 2.09 14.69 23.14 15.34 37.98 0.73 31.38 0.52 9.86 1.16 6.3 2.7 7.2 0.00136 0.26 Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 2.01 0.32 0.6 0.15 0.75 0.08 0.83 0.06 2.64 0.67 4.05 1.16 3.42 0.01 1.24 Applied Economics 2 2.73 0.65 0.73 0.44 3.33 0.69 2.62 0.24 2.01 1.31 3.7 1.32 Scottish Journal of Political Economy 1.84 0.34 0.84 0.19 1.26 0.16 0.81 0.07 0.78 0.58 4.63 2.09 8.06 Journal of Macroeconomics 1.75 0.48 0.41 0.16 0.31 0.09 0.41 0.03 0.05 0.01 0.06 0.01 0.01 0.00761 0.9 Review of Income and Wealth 1.74 2.42 3.19 0.79 2.14 0.46 3.26 0.25 0.87 3.28 10.31 5.13 3.31 Oxford Review of Economic Policy 1.64 1.59 2.18 0.8 2.27 0.54 2.42 0.19 0.84 5.14 8.92 3.67 4.27 0 Journal of Health Economics 1.6 5.09 3.69 1.4 1.85 100 7.58 100 2.36 71.79 9.1 40.76 2.69 Regional Science and Urban Economics 1.59 2.52 3.69 0.85 2.36 0.81 3.67 0.58 1.83 2.4 4.6 2.85 2.12 Journal of Economics and Management Strategy 1.38 4.33 6.46 1.32 3.88 1.43 7.32 1.23 4.19 0.9 6.02 1.55 1.91 World Economy 1.34 0.7 0.6 0.23 0.85 0.25 0.77 0.08 1.03 2.35 3.15 2.5 2.22 0.00046 Small Business Economics 1.33 0.27 0.29 0.06 0.16 0.16 0.53 0.14 0.26 2.14 0.56 2.09 0.09 Economic History Review 1.27 0.58 0.89 0.17 0.46 0.14 1.15 0.06 0.23 0.02 0.29 0.05 0.08 0.00238 0.3 Cambridge Journal of Economics 1.25 0.14 0.26 0.03 0.12 0.34 0.58 0.2 1.15 3.96 1.76 3.16 0.48 0.01 2.05 World Bank Research Observer 0.93 0.46 1.46 0.11 0.77 0.62 1.75 0.37 2.87 4.91 9.31 6.78 2.67 Energy Journal 0.92 1.51 2.99 0.33 1.37 0.25 2.7 0.07 0.82 3.23 7.72 2.67 3.77 0.00346 0.73 Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv/Review of World Economics 0.92 1.85 1.81 0.6 1.32 0.19 1.85 0.08 0.38 0.64 2.21 0.99 1.25 0.00678 0.76 Kyklos 0.91 0.93 1.3 0.27 1.14 0.16 1.47 0.08 0.68 0.66 2.57 1.12 1.67 0.00291 Australian Economic History Review 0.89 Ecological Economics 0.89 1.89 1.14 0.39 0.39 1.65 1.22 0.97 0.31 5.45 3.77 6.47 0.84 0.00133 0.33 Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance Theory 0.87 0.00221 0.4 Review of Industrial Organization 0.87 3.59 3.06 1.37 2.69 0.42 3.1 0.23 2.11 2.07 7.01 5.2 7.52 0.000161 0.03 Journal of Transport Economics and Policy 0.8 1.34 1.74 0.42 0.88 1.25 2.6 0.27 0.67 0.98 3.59 0.18 0.3 0.000902 0.2 Economics and Philosophy 0.78 0.000146 Journal of Accounting and Economics 0.76 8.2 14.3 8.08 22.61 0.7 37.69 0.52 12.1 5.48 22.32 10.84 23.81 Journal of the Japanese and International Economies 0.76 1.34 2.03 0.53 2.72 0.12 2.09 0.07 0.64 0.39 3.83 0.94 3.96 0.00697 1.72 Resource and Energy Economics 0.76 0.88 2.48 0.16 0.73 0.18 2.28 0.04 0.41 0.78 4.21 0.43 0.5 0.0013 0.34 Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 0.72 1.11 0.68 0.11 0.11 0.32 0.68 0.07 0.06 0.15 0.15 0.19 0.01 0.00131 Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 0.71 13.48 42.92 5.94 49.96 1.57 42.61 0.79 17.69 8.27 92.23 17.3 90.12 0.00126 0.32 Economic Development and Cultural Change 0.66 0.93 1.31 0.24 0.77 0.8 1.39 0.55 0.27 5.56 4.27 8.11 0.99 Communist Economies and Economic Transformation 0.65 0.00863 0.7 Journal of Housing Economics 0.62 0.6 2.01 0.38 1.51 0.18 2.39 0.12 0.63 2.14 4.43 3.35 2.71 Journal of Regulatory Economics 0.62 1.34 2.91 0.63 3.68 0.18 2.68 0.13 3.32 1.37 11.84 5.15 21.09 0.01 2.34 Manchester School 0.6 0.88 0.83 0.42 0.8 0.08 0.85 0.04 0.18 0.47 1.04 1.02 0.55 0.00332 0.68 Economic Modelling 0.54 0.2 0.19 0.04 0.09 0.04 0.21 0.01 0.06 0.04 0.32 0.02 0.08 Developing Economies 0.5 0.32 0.34 0.04 0.08 0.08 0.37 0.03 0.03 1.31 1.09 1.73 0.12 0.01 1.4 Journal of Policy Modeling 0.5 0.53 0.26 0.09 0.1 0.06 0.27 0.01 0.06 0.12 0.25 0.03 0.07 Journal of Productivity Analysis 0.49 0.85 1.3 0.25 0.71 2.03 1.37 1.79 0.3 5.97 1.47 4.86 0.12 0.03 3.09 Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics 0.48 0.01 1.06 Australian Journal of Agricultural Economics 0.44 0.00678 0.56 Journal of Risk and Insurance 0.43 0.00138 0.28 Japan and the World Economy 0.41 0.86 0.85 0.3 0.77 0.09 0.85 0.04 0.3 0.3 1.84 0.74 2.19 0.00814 4.05 Review of Black Political Economy 0.4 0.00494 0.98 Journal of Economic Psychology 0.38 1.23 0.84 0.31 0.6 6.07 1.86 7.71 7.98 0.39 2.82 0.87 2.32 0.000887 0.09 Journal of Economic Issues 0.37 0.13 0.09 0.02 0.03 0.09 0.11 0.03 0.4 0.42 0.17 0.33 0.02 0.03 12.42 Economics of Education Review 0.35 4.05 2.92 1.29 1.7 0.78 3.29 0.33 0.71 3.13 7.78 4.38 1.49 0.03 5 Open Economies Review 0.34 0.1 0.19 0.03 0.15 0.02 0.22 0 0.04 0.08 0.31 0.11 0.16 0.00181 0.38 Journal of Agricultural Economics 0.32 0.57 0.82 0.1 0.25 0.55 0.83 0.31 0.11 2.15 3.15 2.6 0.37 0.000631 Journal of Economic Education 0.32 0.96 0.59 0.29 0.34 0.11 0.67 0.08 0.34 0.06 0.28 0.06 0.02 0.03 2.15 European Review of Agricultural Economics 0.31 0.37 0.53 0.04 0.1 0.17 0.52 0.05 0.04 0.44 0.8 0.45 0.09 0.00161 0.34 Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 0.31 0.18 0.24 0.08 0.23 0.04 0.26 0.05 0.18 0.4 1.29 1.04 1.49 Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics 0.31 1.06 2.18 0.4 1.39 0.44 3.11 0.17 0.56 0.32 0.35 0.27 0.03 0.00478 1.55 Jahrbucher fur Nationalokonomie und Statistik 0.3 0.17 0.15 0 3 0 17 0 15 0.03 0 03 0 13 0.13 0 02 0.02 0 19 0.19 0 0.03 0 03 0 0 0 0 0.00831 1 36 1.36 Journal of Evolutionary Economics 0.27 0.29 0.75 0.09 0.64 0.07 0.92 0.04 0.19 0.2 0.45 0.3 0.23 0.000686 0.2 History of Political Economy 0.24 Food Policy 0.23 0.23 0.25 0.04 0.07 0.23 0.29 0.1 0.03 4.85 2.16 6.42 0.24 0.01 3.18 Real Estate Economics 0.22 0.82 2.28 0.32 1.31 1.09 3.88 0.39 0.44 2.36 0.99 1.04 0.42 0.05 5.95 Health Economics 0.2 2.21 1.12 0.61 0.51 69.55 2.99 91.35 0.66 23.47 2.18 12.57 0.19 China Economic Review 0.18 0.1 0.45 0.04 0.45 0.04 0.63 0.02 0.6 0.4 0.72 1.17 0.25 Post-Soviet Affairs 0.18 0.02 2.16 Defence and Peace Economics 0.16 0.00103 0.49 Insurance: Mathematics and Economics 0.16 0.01 2.6 Review of Social Economy 0.16 0.00623 2.09 Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 0.11 0.1 0.18 0.02 0.07 0.11 0.32 0.05 0.82 2.6 2.71 3.43 0.3 0.00104 0.22 International Review of Law and Economics 0.09 0.18 0.46 0.05 0.23 0.06 0.81 0.04 21.27 0.99 2.72 0.68 0.26 0.03 3.21 Post-Soviet Geography and Economics 0.09 Economic Geography 0.07 0.05 0.15 0.01 0.06 0.44 1.08 0.34 2.45 1.82 4.33 2.26 1.01 0.02 3.29 Economics of Planning 0.06 0.03 0.23 0.01 0.3 0.03 0.3 0.02 0.09 0 0 0 0 Eastern European Economics 0.05 0.01 0.02 0 0.01 0.18 0.07 0.19 0.02 0.01 0.07 0.01 0.02 0.00868 2.27 Journal of World Trade 0.05 0.00912 3.04 Applied Economics Letters 0.04 1.08 0.12 0.16 0.07 0.22 0.17 0.07 0.03 0.37 0.08 0.44 0.01 0.000732 0.17 Energy Economics 0.04 0.37 0.88 0.04 0.2 0.12 0.79 0.02 0.07 1.48 4.06 0.27 0.33 0.00382 0.59 Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 0.03 0.15 0.52 0.02 0.12 0.07 0.49 0.02 0.19 0.75 2.83 0.73 0.51 0.03 3.88 Journal of Developing Areas 0.03 0.00937 1.5 American Journal of Economics and Sociology 0.02 Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics 0.02 0 0.15 0 0.03 0.01 0.23 0.01 0.14 0.15 1.2 0.13 0.08 0.000795 0.12 New England Economic Review 0.01 0.24 0.99 0.09 0.59 0.06 1.03 0.02 0.31 0.26 0.78 0.42 0.52 0.05 8.19 Desarrollo Economico 0 0.00254 0.55 Economic and Social Review 0 0.000338 0.06 Economic Development Quarterly 0 0.11 0.18 0.01 0.06 0.36 0.36 0.3 0.34 2.89 2.65 1.74 2.35 0.00334 0.87 Economy and Society 0 0.02 1.96 Ekonomicky Casopis/Journal of Economics 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.0013 0.27 Japanese Economy 0 Nationalokonomisk Tidsskrift 0 0.00164 0.42 Politicka Ekonomie 0 0.01 0.02 0.01 0.04 0 0.02 0 0.01 0 0 0 0 0.00125 0.35 Problems of Economic Transition 0 0.00573 1.5 Revue d'Etudes Comparatives Est-Ouest 0 South African Journal of Economics 0 0.04 0.08 0.01 0.04 0.44 0.1 0.4 0.01 0.5 0.6 0.53 0.08 0.00164 0.64 African Development Review/Revue Africaine de Developpement 0.02 0.18 0.01 0.16 0.01 0.23 0 0.04 0.02 1.17 0.05 0.33 0.01 1.47 Agricultural Economics 0.65 0.8 0.08 0.19 1.16 0.78 0.89 0.09 3.5 3.44 4.78 0.66 0.0012 Annals of Regional Science 0.12 0.32 0.03 0.17 0.07 0.37 0.05 0.11 0.35 0.44 0.46 0.62 0.00154 0.51 British Journal of Industrial Relations 0.22 0.84 0.05 0.29 0.45 1.13 0.44 0.41 5.97 3.91 2.41 0.27 0.00427 Canadian Journal of Development Studies 0.05 0.08 0.01 0.03 0.14 0.39 0.09 0.44 0.89 0.72 1.27 0.1 0.00543 0.95 Canadian Public Policy 0.06 0.11 0.01 0.03 0.12 0.17 0.05 0.08 15.17 1.36 2.93 0.5 0.002 0.55 De Economist 0.14 0.43 0.02 0.17 0.02 0.46 0.01 0.08 0.01 0.24 0 0.29 0.00118 Development and Change 0.39 0.32 0.07 0.1 1.54 0.96 1.14 0.24 9.65 4.36 12.37 0.83 Economic Policy 3.91 12.39 1.36 12.18 0.49 13.02 0.24 4.11 0.71 15.15 1.47 10.05 Economics of Transition 0.9 2.48 0.53 3.85 0.16 2.56 0.1 2.11 1.84 10.97 4.55 18.96 0.00888 1.38 Emerging Markets Finance and Trade 0.01 0.03 0 0 0 0.07 0 0.01 0.02 0.7 0.01 0.16 Environment and Development Economics 1.85 5.46 0.46 2.27 0.3 5.21 0.1 2.64 2.34 9.17 2.68 2.45 1.79E-05 Environmental and Resource Economics 3.01 2.19 0.7 0.8 1.4 2.11 0.78 1.12 4.76 5.05 4.57 0.89 9.97E-05 0.03 European Journal of Industrial Relations 0.01 0.2 0 0.03 0.02 0.31 0.01 0.15 0.14 2.74 0.01 0.15 0.00554 1.06 Finance a Uver 0 0.01 0 0.02 0 0.01 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00394 0.77 Fiscal Studies 0.52 2.73 0.18 1.85 0.14 2.82 0.06 0.74 6.57 11.54 2.68 4.46 0.00336 0.69 Growth and Change 0.11 0.25 0.02 0.1 0.17 0.4 0.1 0.11 1.12 1.83 1.27 0.69 Housing Policy Debate 0.55 1.63 0.22 1.02 6.91 3.77 8.71 10.13 33.31 28.01 17.32 14.02 0.000212 0.04 Industrial and Labor Relations Review 4.23 6.92 1.42 4.12 3.06 7.02 2.48 7.18 8.83 12.64 12.42 6.42 0.000216 Industrial Relations 2.06 4.02 0.84 2.71 0.67 4.36 0.91 2.09 8.17 13.62 8.55 7.43 0.00148 0.8 Information Economics and Policy 0.05 0.53 0.04 0.84 0.02 0.54 0.01 0.59 0.14 3.13 0.5 6.06 0.000335 Inquiry 1.03 0.83 0.3 0.38 39.2 3.47 31.84 1.29 70.29 6.96 13.13 2.81 International Journal of Finance and Economics 0.59 1.01 0.2 0.73 0.07 1.29 0.03 0.28 0.02 0.64 0.02 0.16 0.00655 0.55 International Regional Science Review 0.41 1.61 0.14 1.2 0.11 1.76 0.06 0.37 0.71 3.75 1.14 1.01 0.07 12.75 International Tax and Public Finance 3.64 4.44 1.26 2.96 0.41 4.46 0.14 0.98 0.75 2.94 0.68 1.02 0.02 3.78 Japanese Economic Review 0.6 0.82 0.1 0.3 0.04 0.82 0.01 0.08 0 0.03 0 0 0.0016 0.42 Journal of African Economies 0.34 0.78 0.1 0.62 0.12 0.79 0.05 0.14 2.2 3.8 3.1 0.97 0.0047 1.12 Journal of Business 12.2 25.74 12.55 40.07 0.71 36.64 0.6 9.17 0.86 4.92 1.81 3.37 Journal of Development Studies 1.43 1.29 0.41 0.94 2.08 1.46 1.54 0.43 15.48 7.23 21.91 3.14 0.00231 0.87 Journal of Economic Growth 11.1 34.24 3.47 29 1.07 34.82 0.43 8.61 2.26 26.91 3.55 16.1 Journal of Economic Surveys 0.41 1.49 0.11 0.92 0.05 1.57 0.02 0.72 0.34 3.69 0.55 1.41 Journal of Economics (MVEA) 0.94 0.85 0.2 0.41 0.05 0.85 0.02 0.09 0 0 0 0 0.00641 Journal of Economics (Zeitschrift fur Nationalokonomie) 0.03 5.98 Journal of Finance 98.67 59.85 100 100 6.12 81.37 4.24 36.82 14.84 21.91 27.76 16.4 0.03 3.03 Journal of Financial Intermediation 6.11 20.23 7.58 37.02 0.19 25.92 0.11 6.3 0 0 0 0 Journal of Forecasting 0.83 1.28 0.42 1.59 0.13 1.65 0.07 0.68 0.66 4.51 1.92 6.23 0.00196 Journal of International Money and Finance 7.71 6.11 4.51 7.42 0.66 7.04 0.27 1.47 3.56 8.03 6.93 5.46 0.00217 0.32 Journal of Labor Research 0.21 0.48 0.05 0.18 0.07 0.4 0.06 1.94 2.22 1.27 0.49 0.15 0.00128 0.36 Journal of Money Credit and Banking 18.66 15.06 9.09 9 09 16.69 1.41 1 41 15.69 0.63 0 63 3.75 3 75 5.45 5 45 19.59 12.71 16.53 Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 1.88 3.52 0.8 2.9 4.77 4.25 3.62 3.31 22.85 24.47 10.09 10.12 0 Journal of Regional Science 0.47 0.94 0.14 0.53 0.25 1.01 0.17 0.35 3.21 3.49 4.3 2.25 0.00353 0.77 Labour Economics 2.17 4.23 0.72 2.96 0.3 4.13 0.14 2.25 1.45 4.75 2.4 1.67 0.00153 0.35 Macroeconomic Dynamics 7.05 13.15 3.25 14.36 0.45 13.62 0.2 2.92 0.46 13.61 1.62 13.33 0.00208 0.33 Mathematical Social Sciences 3.05 2.27 0.41 0.51 0.27 2.5 0.55 0.36 0.32 0.73 0.54 0.37 0.00507 0.8 Monthly Labor Review 1.12 1.63 0.47 1.29 5.65 1.85 3.95 3.7 3.37 6.1 5.99 6.13 0.000541 0.1 Papers in Regional Science 0.11 0.34 0.03 0.19 0.23 0.44 0.28 0.1 0.24 0.45 0.46 0.18 0.00526 0.64 Post-Communist Economies 0.02 0.04 0 0.02 0.02 0.17 0.01 0.04 0.35 0.5 0.4 0.07 Regional Studies 0.32 0.25 0.06 0.13 0.97 0.72 0.68 0.3 10.23 3 4.95 1.31 0.00189 0.41 Resources Policy 0.04 0.14 0 0.04 1.12 0.19 0.92 0.03 0.27 0.69 0.02 0.01 0.00124 Review of Economic Dynamics 8.92 17.49 2.85 12.37 0.65 17.73 0.28 3.04 0.71 6.17 1.38 2.68 0.00766 2.73 Review of Financial Studies 48.02 53.74 48.13 82.78 2 68.62 1.09 19.38 1.94 6.92 4.12 5.23 0.0017 Review of International Political Economy 0.03 0.06 0 0.01 0.16 0.52 0.12 0.83 1.23 3.77 1.38 2.18 0.02 1.13 Telecommunications Policy 0.06 0.12 0.01 0.07 0.1 0.26 0.06 0.48 0.19 0.38 0.17 0.24 0.00313 0.35 Notes: This table lists all the rankings of Economics Journals used in this paper. JEEA refers to the ranking provided by Journal of European Economic Association; J_IN refers to the ranking by Journal Impact within Economics field; PA_IN refers to ranking by per-article impact within Economics field; WJ_IN refers to ranking by journal impact within Economics field without adjusting for reference intensity of citing journals; WPA_IN refers to ranking by per-article impact within Economics field without adjusting for reference intensity of citing journals; J_ALL refers to the ranking by Journal Impact on all Social Sciences; PA_ALL refers to ranking by per-article impact on all Social Sciences; WJ_ALL refers to ranking by journal impact on all Social Sciences without adjusting for reference intensity of citing journals; WPA_ALL refers to ranking by per-article impact on all Social Sciences without adjusting for reference intensity of citing journals; J_POL refers to the ranking by Journal Impact on Policy Journals; PA_ POL refers to ranking by per-article impact on Policy Journal; WJ_ POL refers to ranking by journal impact on Policy Journals without adjusting for reference intensity of citing journals; WPA_ POL refers to ranking by per-article impact on Policy Journals without adjusting for reference intensity of citing journals; EIGEN is a measure of the overall value provided by all the articles published in a given journal in a given year; ARTINFL is a measure of a journal's influence based on the number of citations per article. Table A2: Variable descriptions and their sources Variable Description Source GDP GDP at Market Prices (current US$) World Bank Data Development Platform Per capita GDP Real GDP per capita World Bank Data Development Platform Population Population, Total World Bank Data Development Platform Enrollment in tertiary education Total enrollment in tertiary education World Bank EdStats English is an official language 1 if English is one of the country's official languages Various Sources Press freedom index Level of press freedom ranging from 0 (free) to 115 Reporters withouth Borders Autocracy Democracy Index Level of democracy/autocracy ranging from -10 (autocratic) to +10 (democratic). World Resources Institute Political right index Level of political rights (Freedom house) ranging from 1 (most free) to 7 (least free) World Resources Institute Civil liberty index Level of civil liberty (Freedom house) ranging from 1 (most free) to 7 (least free) World Resources Institute Level of freedom index Level of freedom (Freedom house) in three categories (Free, Partly Free, Not Free) World Resources Institute Muslim dummy 1 if Muslim country, 0 otherwise CIA World Factbook EAP dummy 1 if country is in East Asia and Pacific region, 0 otherwise World Bank country classification ECA dummy 1 if country is in Europe and Central Asia, 0 otherwise World Bank country classification LAC dummy 1 if country is in Latin America and Carribean region, 0 otherwise World Bank country classification MENA dummy 1 if country is in Middle East and North Africa region, 0 otherwise World Bank country classification SA dummy 1 if country is in South Asia region, 0 otherwise World Bank country classification SSA dummy 1 if country is in Sub-Saharan Africa region, 0 otherwise World Bank country classification OECD dummy 1 if country is an OECD country or is High-Income as classified by World Bank, 0 otherwise World Bank country classification LSMS dummy 1 if Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) survey was done in a particular year, 0 otherwise World Bank Living Standards Measurement Surveys LSMS year of release Year of release of first LSMS in a given country World Bank Living Standards Measurement Surveys DHS dummy 1 if Demographic and Health (DHS) survey was done in a particular year, 0 otherwise Macro International Inc. DHS year of release Year of release of first DHS in a given country Macro International Inc. Overall Data Quality 0 if poor and 100 if good World Bank Country Statistical Information Data Collection Index 0 if poor and 100 if good World Bank Country Statistical Information Data Availability Index 0 if poor and 100 if good World Bank Country Statistical Information Data Statistical Practice 0 if poor and 100 if good World Bank Country Statistical Information Notes: This table lists variables for which data was obtained from various sources. Table A3: Total number of publications in all journals and in top 5 economics journals (1985-2004): breakdown by country Country Name All journals Top 5 only Country Name All journals Top 5 only Country Name All journals Top 5 only Afghanistan 7 0 Cape Verde 0 0 Gambia, The 14 0 Albania 28 0 Cayman Islands 1 0 Georgia 26 0 Algeria 16 0 Central African Republic 0 0 Germany 2085 35 American Samoa 0 0 Chad 1 0 Ghana 168 2 Andorra 0 0 Chile 228 10 Greece 402 0 Angola 5 0 China 1807 65 Greenland 0 0 Anguilla 0 0 Colombia 134 8 Grenada 0 0 Antigua and Barbuda 0 0 Comoros 0 0 Guadeloupe 0 0 Argentina 486 9 Congo, Dem. Rep. 15 0 Guam 1 0 Armenia 9 0 Congo, Rep. 2 0 Guatemala 43 0 Aruba 2 0 Cook Islands 0 0 Guinea 14 0 Australia 1806 8 Costa Rica 68 0 Guinea-Bissau 2 0 Austria 181 3 Cote d'Ivoire 116 3 Guyana 16 0 Azerbaijan 3 0 Croatia 21 0 Haiti 19 0 Bahamas, The 1 0 Cuba 45 0 Honduras 46 0 Bahrain 5 0 Cyprus 27 0 Hong Kong, China 190 1 Bangladesh 284 6 Czech Republic 631 6 Hungary 244 4 Barbados 19 0 Denmark 574 2 Iceland 15 1 Belarus 28 1 Djibouti 0 0 India 1093 39 Belgium 246 4 Dominica 0 0 Indonesia 682 10 Belize 6 0 Dominican Republic 36 0 Iran, Islamic Rep. 53 0 Benin 14 0 Ecuador 70 1 Iraq 16 0 Bermuda 1 0 Egypt, Arab Rep. 127 1 Ireland 501 5 Bhutan 2 0 El Salvador 24 0 Israel 385 21 Bolivia 75 2 Equatorial Guinea 0 0 Italy 571 12 Bosnia and Herzegovina 7 0 Eritrea 4 0 Jamaica 61 0 Botswana 58 2 Estonia 47 0 Japan 2209 57 Brazil 506 10 Ethiopia 119 2 Jordan 13 0 Brunei 1 0 Faeroe Islands 0 0 Kazakhstan 32 0 Bulgaria 120 1 Fiji 15 0 Kenya 217 3 Burkina Faso 47 1 Finland 270 0 Kiribati 1 0 Burundi 4 0 France 898 40 Korea, Dem. Rep. 0 0 Cambodia 9 0 French Guyana 1 0 Korea, Rep. 0 0 Cameroon 77 1 French Polynesia 0 0 Kuwait 20 0 Canada 4151 86 Gabon 0 0 Kyrgyz Republic 18 0 Country Name All journals Top 5 only Country Name All journals Top 5 only Country Name All journals Top 5 only Lao PDR 7 0 Niger 20 0 St. Kitts and Nevis 0 0 Latvia 6 0 Nigeria 148 2 St. Lucia 3 0 Lebanon 7 0 Niue 0 0 St. Vincent and the Grenadine 1 0 Lesotho 8 0 Northern Mariana Islands 0 0 Sudan 49 0 Liberia 1 0 Norway 359 3 Suriname 5 0 Libya 3 0 Oman 1 0 Swaziland 7 0 Liechtenstein 0 0 Pakistan 149 4 Sweden 739 15 Lithuania 15 1 Palau 0 0 Switzerland 197 7 Luxembourg 5 0 Panama 11 0 Syrian Arab Republic 3 0 Macao, China 0 0 Papua New Guinea 33 0 Taiwan Province of China 411 3 Macedonia, FYR 8 0 Paraguay 17 0 Tajikistan 1 0 Madagascar 38 0 Peru 88 3 Tanzania 120 1 Malawi 67 0 Philippines 262 2 Thailand 167 4 Malaysia 169 0 Poland 318 3 Timor-Leste 2 0 Maldives 1 0 Portugal 110 3 Togo 2 0 Mali 27 0 Puerto Rico 22 1 Tonga 3 0 Malta 2 0 Qatar 1 0 Trinidad and Tobago 20 0 Marshall Islands 0 0 Reunion 0 0 Tunisia 30 1 Martinique 0 0 Romania 59 0 Turkey 298 2 Mauritania 1 0 Russian Federation 1649 25 Turkmenistan 5 0 Mauritius 7 0 Rwanda 16 0 Tuvalu 0 0 Mexico 631 18 Samoa 1 0 Uganda 76 2 Micronesia, F d S Mi i Fed. Sts. 0 0 S M i San Marino 1 0 Ukraine Uk i 73 0 Moldova 15 0 Sao Tome and Principe 1 0 United Arab Emirates 4 0 Monaco 0 0 Saudi Arabia 24 0 United Kingdom 6567 102 Mongolia 12 0 Senegal 31 1 United States 36649 2383 Morocco 32 0 Serbia and Montenegro 17 0 Uruguay 23 0 Mozambique 29 0 Seychelles 2 0 Uzbekistan 14 0 Myanmar 2 0 Sierra Leone 6 1 Vanuatu 1 0 Namibia 16 0 Singapore 124 0 Venezuela, RB 28 1 Nauru 0 0 Slovak Republic 94 1 Vietnam 84 1 Nepal 69 0 Slovenia 93 0 Virgin Islands (U.S.) 0 0 Netherlands 1013 10 Solomon Islands 2 0 West Bank and Gaza 0 0 Netherlands Antilles 0 0 Somalia 6 0 Yemen, Rep. 0 0 New Caledonia 0 0 South Africa 721 13 Zambia 47 0 New Zealand 271 1 Spain 643 6 Zimbabwe 117 0 Nicaragua 62 0 Sri Lanka 105 1 Notes: The top 5 journals consist of Econometrica, the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economic Studies Table A4: Event study: linear analysis of number of publications before and after DHS/LSMS/IFLS release Table A4 Panel A: Conditional publication count Dependent variable: Logarithm of number of publications release year release year + 1 release year + 2 Independent variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) Year > Year of event 0.109 0.109 0.267*** 0.267*** 0.222*** 0.229*** (0.068) (0.067) (0.066) (0.066) (0.057) (0.057) Time to event 0.074*** 0.078** 0.053** 0.063* 0.049** 0.065** (0.023) (0.032) (0.025) (0.032) (0.024) (0.030) Interaction event dummy variable and time to event -0.006 -0.019 -0.033 (0.027) (0.024) (0.023) Year fixed effects yes yes yes yes yes yes Country fixed effects yes yes yes yes yes yes Number of observations 789 789 827 827 860 860 Number of countries 77 77 77 77 77 77 R-squared 0.27 0.27 0.26 0.26 0.25 0.26 Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses, clustered at the country level. ***, **, * indicate statistical significance at the 1, 5, and 10 percent level respectively. Sample restricted to non-OECD/non-high-income countries. Coefficients for constant term, log GDP per capita and log population are not shown. The event variable corresponds to the year of release of the first dataset (columns (1) and (2)), one year after release (columns (3) and (4)), and two years after release (columns (5) and (6)). The analysis is restricted to data within 10 years of the event date. y p Table A4 Panel B: Probability of publication Dependent variable: Number of publications is positive release year release year + 1 release year + 2 Independent variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) Year > Year of event 0.034 0.041 0.045 0.062 -0.064 -0.038 (0.034) (0.032) (0.041) (0.040) (0.044) (0.044) Time to event 0.023*** 0.041*** 0.019** 0.036*** 0.027*** 0.043*** (0.008) (0.010) (0.008) (0.009) (0.008) (0.009) Interaction event dummy variable and time to event -0.033*** -0.036*** -0.037*** (0.010) (0.009) (0.008) Year fixed effects yes yes yes yes yes yes Country fixed effects yes yes yes yes yes yes Number of observations 1193 1193 1230 1230 1258 1258 Number of countries 78 78 78 78 78 78 R-squared 0.07 0.08 0.06 0.08 0.07 0.09 Notes: Robust standard errors in parentheses, clustered at the country level. ***, **, * indicate statistical significance at the 1, 5, and 10 percent level respectively. Sample restricted to non-OECD/non-high-income countries. Coefficients for constant term, log GDP per capita and log population are not shown. The event variable corresponds to the year of release of the first dataset (columns (1) and (2)), one year after release (columns (3) and (4)), and two years after release (columns (5) and (6)). The analysis is restricted to data within 10 years of the event date. Table A4 Panel C: Unconditional publication count Dependent variable: Number of publications (linear specifications) release year release year + 1 release year + 2 Independent variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) Year > Year of event 0.402 0.438 0.986 1.116 0.768 1.022 (1.125) (1.065) (0.868) (0.825) (0.779) (0.798) Time to event 0.940* 1.026 0.778** 0.910* 0.774** 0.930** (0.479) (0.677) (0.364) (0.520) (0.319) (0.453) Interaction event dummy variable and time to event -0.157 -0.275 -0.361 (0.495) (0.433) (0.406) Year fixed effects yes yes yes yes yes yes Country fixed effects yes yes yes yes yes yes Number of observations 1193 1193 1230 1230 1258 1258 Number of countries 78 78 78 78 78 78 R-squared 0.17 0.17 0.16 0.16 0.15 0.15 Notes : Robust standard errors in parentheses, clustered at the country level. ***, **, * indicate statistical significance at the 1, 5, and 10 percent level respectively. Sample restricted to non-OECD/non-high-income countries. Coefficients for constant term, log GDP per capita and log population are not shown. The event variable corresponds to the year of release of the first dataset (columns (1) and (2)), one year after release (columns (3) and (4)), and two years after release (columns (5) and (6)). The analysis is restricted to data within 10 years of the event date.