Recent publishing trends at the AER, JPE and QJE

Abstract

This note summarizes recent trends in institutional affiliation of authors who publish in three leading general interest journals, American Economic Review (AER), Journal of Political Economy (JPE), and Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE). The statistics show that well over 40% of the pages published in the QJE between 2000 and 2003 are by authors affiliated with one of four institutions. This represents a significant increase from analogous figures during the 1980s and earlier periods. The concentrations of affiliations are not as high at the AER or JPE, but they still show a reversal of the declining trend in concentration that occurred from 1950 to 1989.

Notes

¹ Siegfried (1994) includes shorter papers and communications, as well as comments and memorials. One reason for excluding shorter papers is that the AER has a significantly higher proportion of these papers than the JPE or QJE.

² When it was difficult to determine which institution was an individual's primary one, the first one listed was used. Using an alternative scheme of equally dividing the pages for each institution listed results in no change in the substantive results.

³ For the JPE, the top four contributing institutions in the 1980s were Chicago, Stanford, MIT and Harvard. For the QJE, the relevant four are Harvard, Princeton, MIT and Stanford.

⁴ Many of the rankings of economics departments have a high correlation with one another. For example, see rankings by Scott and Mitias (1996), the National Research Council or the US News and World Report.

⁵ The JPE editorial assistant further indicated that in order to expedite the review process, the new editorial board would be increasing the proportion of manuscripts directly rejected by the editor (without soliciting referee reports) to about one-half.

⁶ Ellison (2003) reports that while it used to be customary for papers to be accepted within six to nine months of initial submission, a typical cycle of submission and revisions lasts two years.