American Economic Review Vol. 109 No. 8 2019

Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?

Pierre Azoulay¹; Christian Fons-Rosen²; Joshua Graff Zivin³

¹ MIT Sloan School of Management, 100 Main Street, E62-487, Cambridge, MA 02142, and NBER (email: ) · ² Department of Economics, UC Merced, 5200 N. Lake Road, Merced, CA 95343, and CEPR (email: ) · ³ School of Global Policy and Strategy, UCSD, D9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, and NBER (email: )

Abstract

We examine how the premature death of eminent life scientists alters the vitality of their fields. While the flow of articles by collaborators into affected fields decreases after the death of a star scientist, the flow of articles by non-collaborators increases markedly. This surge in contributions from outsiders draws upon a different scientific corpus and is disproportionately likely to be highly cited. While outsiders appear reluctant to challenge leadership within a field when the star is alive, the loss of a luminary provides an opportunity for fields to evolve in new directions that advance the frontier of knowledge within them.

DOI

10.1257/aer.20161574

Volume

109

Issue

8

Pages

2889-2920

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

APA 7 MLA 9 Chicago (author–date) Harvard Elsevier Harvard (JFE, JBF…) The Accounting Review Academy of Management American Marketing Association INFORMS (Management Science) Copy citation Copied ✓