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Working Paper
Academic rankings with RePEc
This document describes the data collection and use of data for the computation of rankings within RePEc (Research Papers in Economics). This encompasses the determination of impact factors for journals and working paper series, as well as the ranking of authors, institutions, and geographic regions. The various ranking methods are also compared, using a snapshot of the data.
Working Paper
Loan regulation and child labor in rural India
We study the impact of loan regulation in rural India on child labor with an overlapping-generations model of formal and informal lending, human capital accumulation, adverse selection, and differentiated risk types. Specifically, we build a model economy that replicates the current outcome with a loan rate cap and no lender discrimination by risk using a survey of rural lenders. Households borrow primarily from informal moneylenders and use child labor. Removing the rate cap and allowing lender discrimination markedly increases capital use, eliminates child labor, and improves welfare of all ...
Working Paper
Universal Basic Income versus Unemployment Insurance
In this paper we compare the welfare effects of unemployment insurance (UI) with an universal basic income (UBI) system in an economy with idiosyncratic shocks to employment. Both policies provide a safety net in the face of idiosyncratic shocks. While the unemployment insurance program should do a better job at protecting the unemployed, it suffers from moral hazard and substantial monitoring costs, which may threaten its usefulness. The universal basic income, which is simpler to manage and immune to moral hazard, may represent an interesting alternative in this context. We work within a ...
Working Paper
A journal ranking based on central bank citations
We present a ranking of journals geared towards measuring the policy relevance of research. We compute simple impact factors that count only citations made in central bank publications. Our baseline ranking focuses on the period 2014–2023 and examines all items published in the Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) database. This ranking confirms the high policy relevance of journals specialising in macro, monetary and international economics. Also, the major general interest economic journals feature reasonably well in this ranking. In contrast, the major finance journals fare somewhat less ...
Working Paper
Parenthood and productivity of highly skilled labor: evidence from the groves of academe
We examine the effect of pregnancy and parenthood on the research productivity of academic economists. Combining the survey responses of nearly 10,000 economists with their publication records as documented in their RePEc accounts, we do not find that motherhood is associated with low research productivity. Nor do we find a statistically significant unconditional effect of a first child on research productivity. Conditional difference-in-differences estimates, however, suggest that the effect of parenthood on research productivity is negative for unmarried women and positive for untenured ...
Working Paper
Paving the Road for Replications: Experimental Results from an Online Research Bibliography
Are users of a bibliographic database interested in learning about replications? Can they be induced to learn? To answer these questions, we performed an experiment at the online research bibliography, RePEc (Research Papers in Economics). RePEc is the main research bibliography for pre-prints and published papers in economics. Using randomized stratification, we allocated 324 replications and their corresponding original studies to clusters. We then drew from those clusters to construct treatment and control groups. Brightly colored tabs were added to the relevant webpages to alert visitors ...
Working Paper
Author identification in economics, ... and beyond
Identifying authorship correctly and efficiently is a difficult problem when the literature is abundant, but poorly recorded. Homonyms are tedious to differentiate. This paper describes how the field of economics has organized itself with respect to author identification. We describe the RePEc project with a special emphasis on the RePEc Author Service. We then discuss how the concept is currently being expanded to the entire scientific body with the AuthorClaim project.
Working Paper
On the Need for a Replication Journal
There is very little replication of research in economics, particularly compared with other sciences. This paper argues that there is a dire need for studies that replicate research, that their scarcity is due to poor or negative rewards for replicators, and that this could be improved with a journal that exclusively publishes replication studies. I then discuss how such a journal could be organized, in particular in the face of some negative rewards some replication studies may elicit.
Working Paper
Superstar Economists: Coauthorship networks and research output
We study the impact of research collaborations in coauthorship networks on research output and how optimal funding can maximize it. Through the links in the collaboration network, researchers create spillovers not only to their direct coauthors but also to researchers indirectly linked to them. We characterize the equilibrium when agents collaborate in multiple and possibly overlapping projects. We bring our model to the data by analyzing the coauthorship network of economists registered in the RePEc Author Service. We rank the authors and research institutions according to their contribution ...
Working Paper
Basel Accord and financial intermediation: the impact of policy
This paper studies loan activity in a context where banks must follow Basel Accord-type rules and acquire financing from households. Loan activity typically decreases when entrepreneurs? investment returns decline, and we study which type of policy could revigorate an economy in a trough. We find that active monetary policy increases loan volume even when the economy is in good shape; introducing active capital requirement policy can be effective as well if it implies tightening of regulation in bad times. This is performed with an heterogeneous agent economy with occupational choice, ...