nep-sog New Economics Papers
on Sociology of Economics
Issue of 2007‒08‒27
five papers chosen by
Jonas Holmström
Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration

  1. Where Economics Has Been Headed? Multiple Identities And Diversity In Economic Literature Evidence From Top Journals Over The Period 2000-2006 A First Note By Campiglio, Luigi; Caruso, Raul
  2. Should Research Performance be Measured Unidimensionally? Evidence from Rankings of Academic Economists By Henrekson, Magnus; Waldenström, Daniel
  3. The Name Game. Notes on the Choice of Methods in Ranking Institutes By Peter Huber; Angelina Keil
  4. The Pricing of Academic Journals: A Two-Sided Market Perspective By JEON, Doh-Shin; ROCHET, Jean-Charles
  5. Academic licensing: a European study By Annamaria Conti; Patrick Gaulé; Dominique Foray

  1. By: Campiglio, Luigi; Caruso, Raul
    Abstract: This short paper presents some preliminary results of an ongoing research work focusing on richness and diversity of economic literature. The key idea is that each article published in an economic journal retains multiple identities. These multiple identities are captured through the use of Jel codes. A sample of ten top generalist journals has been selected. The relative abundance of all Jel categories has been computed for the period 2000-2006. Moreover, a degree of diversity has been proposed for both the sampled journals and the entire Econlit database.
    Keywords: JEL; Econlit; Economic Journals; multiple identities; identity; relative abundance; diversity; evenness; richness.
    JEL: A10
    Date: 2007–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:4540&r=sog
  2. By: Henrekson, Magnus (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)); Waldenström, Daniel (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN))
    Abstract: The increased international exchange and competition in modern economics research has boosted the demand for objective and internationally comparable evaluations of institutions and individual researchers. There exist several plausible measures of research performance, each capturing one or several relevant aspects, but none of them can be argued to suffice as the sole vehicle for the ranking and valuation of output. Using a sample of the whole population of full professors of economics in one country (Sweden) we explore how the use of different measures influence outcomes in terms of the skewness and ranking of individual performances. We find large differences across all measures, but some deviate more than others. In particular, the journal ranking of Kalaitzidakis et al. 2003 (KMS), which was endorsed by the European Economic Association and has been extremely influential especially in Europe, appears to be an outlier among the available measures. Its distribution of performances is the most skewed, and its ranking of scholars corresponds the least with the rankings of the other measures. Hence, relying on one single metric of research quality, especially one that is as extreme as KMS, is associated with a great risk given that researchers tend to adjust behavior in order to maximize the assessed relative and absolute value of their work.
    Keywords: Impact of Research; Ranking; Research Output; Research Productivity
    JEL: A11 A13 A14 B41
    Date: 2007–08–15
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0712&r=sog
  3. By: Peter Huber (WIFO); Angelina Keil (WIFO)
    Abstract: Two recent studies published in "Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik" are used to discuss methods to develop bibliometric analyses and rankings of economic research institutions. According to them, standardisation methods using the number of staff or university graduates may have a crucial impact on results, especially when the weighting methods used are not sufficiently selective. Different methods to prepare the database also have considerable influence on the data quality and results. Rankings based on a variety of methods for weighting the quality are frequently highly correlated with each other, but they supply quite different placements for institutes.
    Keywords: Rankings Publikationstätigkeit empirische Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitute
    Date: 2007–01–16
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wfo:wpaper:y:2007:i:287&r=sog
  4. By: JEON, Doh-Shin; ROCHET, Jean-Charles
    JEL: D42 L42 L82
    Date: 2007–06–21
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ide:wpaper:7208&r=sog
  5. By: Annamaria Conti (Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation, Collège du Management de la Technologie, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne); Patrick Gaulé (Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation, Collège du Management de la Technologie, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne); Dominique Foray (Chaire en Economie et Management de l'Innovation, Collège du Management de la Technologie, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
    Abstract: This paper is an empirical analysis of the impact that different organisational forms of the Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) in Europe have on their licensing activity. Given the great diversity of organization forms prevailing across European TTOs, our paper attempts to shed more light on which of those forms might be more efficient. We use as a measure of efficiency and as dependent variable of our model the number of license agreements concluded. Controlling for staff, invention disclosures, quality of the academic institution, life science orientation and demand for technology, we find evidence for the importance of personnel with a PhD in science in the TTO to facilitate communication between academics and the TTO. We find that the age of the TTO has a significant but negative effect. We do not find a positive effect for private organization of the TTO. Our data is derived from the 2004-2005 survey on TTO activities by the Association of European Science and Technology Professionals (ASTP) and information collected from TTO web sites.
    Keywords: technology transfer offices, technology licensing, university licensing
    JEL: L3 O31 O32 O38
    Date: 2007–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cmi:wpaper:cemi-workingpaper-2007-001&r=sog

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