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Journal of Political Economy Vol. 114 No. 2 2006

Economics: An Emerging Small World

Sanjeev Goyal1,2; Marco J. van der Leij; José L. Moraga‐González3,4,5

1 University of Essex · 2 University of Cambridge · 3 University of Groningen · 4 Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam · 5 Erasmus University Rotterdam

open access

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.

DOI
10.1086/500990
Volume
114
Issue
2
Pages
403-412
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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