Economics: An emerging small world

Sanjeev Goyal*, Marco J. van der Leij, José Luis Moraga-González

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

We study the evolution of social distance among economists over the period 1970-2000. While the number of economists has more than doubled, the distance between them, which was already small, has declined significantly. The key to understanding the short average distances is the observation that economics is spanned by a collection of interlinked stars. A star is an economist who writes with many other economists, most of whom have few coauthors and generally do not write with each other.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)403-412
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Political Economy
Volume114
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2006

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