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Quality Control in Economics
Author(s) -
Laband David N.,
Tollison Robert D.,
Karahan Gokhan
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
kyklos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.766
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1467-6435
pISSN - 0023-5962
DOI - 10.1111/1467-6435.00189
Subject(s) - economics , control (management) , ex ante , citation , investment (military) , quality (philosophy) , positive economics , politics , public economics , information economics , applied economics , neoclassical economics , macroeconomics , political science , management , law , philosophy , epistemology
This paper analyzes the editorial screening process in economics, employing data from the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics . We examine three issues: the decline of critical commentary in economics, the increased referencing behavior of authors, and the decline in the citation of economic research. We find that there is empirical evidence in favor of the idea that these trends are mostly due to more ex ante investment by authors in their papers and less need for ex post quality control. We appreciate helpful comments received from William Shughart, John Sophocleus, and the editors of Kyklos . The usual caveat applies.