Race-related Research in Economics: Volume, Content and Publication Incentives
OPEN ACCESS
Loading...
Author / Producer
Date
2024-07
Publication Type
Working Paper
ETH Bibliography
yes
Citations
Altmetric
OPEN ACCESS
Data
Rights / License
Abstract
Issues of racial justice and economic inequalities across racial and ethnic groups have risen to the top of public debate. Economists’ ability to contribute to these debates is based on the body of race-related research. We study the volume and content of race-related research in economics and examine the implicit incentives to produce such work. We do so for a corpus of 225 000 economics publications from 1960 to 2020 to which we apply an algorithmic approach to classify race-related work, and construct paths to publication for 22 000 NBER and 10 000 CEPR working papers posted over the last few decades. We present three new facts. First, since 1960 less than 2% of economics publications have been race-related, with such work being balkanized into a few …elds and largely absent from many others. There is an uptick in such work in the mid 1990s. Among the top-5 journals this is driven by the AER, QJE and the JPE. Econometrica and the REStud have each cumulatively published fewer than 15 race-related articles since 1960. Second, on content, while over 50% of race-related publications in the 1970s focused on Black individuals, by the 2010s this had fallen to 20%. There has been a steady decline in the share of race-related research on discrimination since the 1980s, with a rise in the share of studies on identity. Finally, irrespective of …eld, race related working papers do not have worse publication outcomes compared to non race-related working papers, in terms of publication likelihood, quality of publication, publication lags and citations. Hence conditional on working papers being produced, the publications process provides little disincentive to work on race-related issues. We discuss policy implications stemming from our …ndings on economists’ ability to contribute to debates on race and ethnicity in the economy.
Permanent link
Publication status
published
External links
Editor
Book title
Journal / series
Volume
08/2024
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
ETH Zurich, Center for Law & Economics
Event
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
Race-related research
Organisational unit
09627 - Ash, Elliott / Ash, Elliott