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IN TANDEM OR OUT OF SYNC? ACADEMIC ECONOMICS RESEARCH AND PUBLIC POLICY MEASURES
Author(s) -
Kosnik LeaRachel
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
contemporary economic policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.454
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1465-7287
pISSN - 1074-3529
DOI - 10.1111/coep.12117
Subject(s) - economics , unemployment , inflation (cosmology) , empirical research , monetary policy , public policy , macroeconomics , public economics , gross domestic product , sync , economic growth , philosophy , physics , epistemology , theoretical physics , channel (broadcasting) , engineering , electrical engineering
This paper investigates whether academic research attention to certain policy‐related measures (including gross domestic product, unemployment, and inflation) is correlated with empirical measurements of the measures themselves. In other words, when unemployment rises, does research attention to the matter increase? Or do economists pursue research (in the short run) relatively uninfluenced by policy shocks on the ground? Text analysis implies that economic attention to key policy terms does correlate with empirical movements of the terms in most instances; however, the stronger and more consistent correlation is between use of policy terms in the literature and discussion of them by the broader public. ( JEL A11, H00)