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Economists in the PITS?

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Abstract

Academic economists today are caught in a “Publication Impossibility Theorem System” or PITS. In order to further their careers, they are required to publish in A-journals, but for the vast majority this is impossible because there are few slots open for them in such journals. Such academic competition maybe useful to generate hard work; however, there may be serious negative consequences: the wrong output may be produced in an inefficient way, the wrong people may be selected, and losers may react in a harmful way. This article suggests several ways to remedy this situation.

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Notes

  1. The same holds for business schools in the United States exhibiting an “extreme emphasis” on publications in A-journals (Starbuck 2005). For further evidence, see Moizer (2009).

  2. See, e.g., Lee (2006) for various definitions and the corresponding literature.

  3. Faculties of economics at numerous universities (e.g., the University of Linz in Austria), as well as economics associations (e.g., the Verein fuer Socialpolitik, the association of economists in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), have an official list in which they assign points for publishing in A-, B-, C- etc. journals. Typically, a publication in one of the A-journals listed above gives three times as many points as a B-journal publication. There are also universities that explicitly offer a monetary reward for publishing in highly ranked journals. The University of Economics and Business Administration in Vienna, for example, pays authors 3,000 Euros for publication in what they define as an A+-journal (which, in economics, includes the five journals in the text above, as well as six more), and 1,000 Euros for publication in an A-journal, i.e., a top publication is defined to be worth three times as much as a second-rate one (http://wu-wien.ac.at/forschung.praemie). The Tinbergen Institute in the Netherlands distinguishes between journals ranked “AA”, “A,” and “B”. Among the latter, are (otherwise highly regarded) the reviews such as Economica, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, or Economic Letters. Other universities do not consider journal publications lower than A at all. It is sometimes rumored that to publish in B, C, or other lower-ranked journals has even a negative effect on one’s career.

  4. As always, it is difficult to state whether, and to what extent, this and the following arguments apply to the United States academic system because it is characterized by such a wide variety: The top universities are very different from minor institutions which also call themselves universities. Another question is to what extent the observations and suggestions discussed here also apply to disciplines outside economics. While they can certainly not be directly transferred, there are indications that many aspects are also relevant elsewhere, see, e.g., the discussion by Hewstone and Stroebe (2008) on social psychology.

  5. See the charges of “autism” made against standard economics from many quarters. The movement, which started in the Grandes Ecoles in France and led to an online journal, Post-Autistic Economics Review, is well known.

  6. “… academics may spend as much time on the style of their writing and the orientation of their arguments as on the raw content” (Raelin 2008, p. 125; see also Black et al. 1998; Frey 2003).

  7. In a related field, accounting, some authors are prepared to conclude that accounting research has little or no effect on practice, see Bedford (1978, p. 2), Dyckman et al. (1978, p. 87), Kaplan (1978, p. 168), Sullivan (1993), and Moizer (2009, p. 3).

  8. It can be argued that an economist who manages to publish one or two articles in an A-journal is often worse than somebody who engages in broader academic activities, and has published articles in respectable, but not top, journals. The former has devoted all effort to writing articles acceptable to the referees of the top journals, but otherwise is not well trained for the other academic tasks (I owe this point to Reiner Eichenberger).

  9. French or German scholars traditionally developed their ideas in a way, which differs fundamentally from the way Americans do today. However, it should not be forgotten that this kind of writing was used by some of the most original and best scholars in the discipline.

  10. Such behavior is, of course, inconsistent with the generally held view of referees solely acting according to professional standards and ethics. It is, however, difficult to see why the economic model of behavior essentially based on self-interest should not apply to scholars in their role as referees.

  11. The academic system in some countries works in this way: full professors in particular are not required to show that they continue to publish (or not). To the extent this is the case, the second suggestion has already been realized.

  12. It should be kept in mind that no system is able to exclude persons who do not perform well after having entered it. The relevant question is how large their share is, and how badly they affect the system. In the case of academia, the damage is not so large because such people normally decide to engage more in teaching and in administrative tasks. This helps the more productive scholars to have time to do research.

  13. According to a recent analysis by Oswald (2009) for the United Kingdom, outstanding work—a set of genuinely world-leading articles—comes from a wide range of sources, namely 21 different universities not normally considered in the top half-dozen in the country.

  14. Somewhat surprisingly, as more journals become available online, more recent and fewer journals and articles are cited. Researchers are more quickly put in touch with prevailing opinion tending to accelerate consensus and narrowing the range of ideas and findings (Evans 2008). Alternative procedures to the present publication system are provided by Prüfer and Zetland (2007) and Tsang and Frey (2007).

  15. The evidence refers to psychology journals, Peters and Ceci (1982).

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Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to the reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions, and for discussions with Charles Blankart, Hans-Dietrich Daniel, Reiner Eichenberger, Lars Feld, Gerd Gigerenzer, Donald Gillies, Berthold Herrendorf, Bengt Holmström, Todd Kaplan, Alfred Kieser, Gebhard Kirchgaessner, Frederic Lee, Simon Luechinger, Simon Milligan, Peter Moizer, Andrew Oswald, Matteo Rizzolli, Katja Rost, Bill Starbuck, Bodo Steiner, Wolfgang Stroebe, Alois Stutzer, Jean Tirole, and Peter Weingart. The extensive conversations with Margit Osterloh were especially useful. While several of the above persons agreed with me, I wish to state that some of them disagreed, sometimes strongly.

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  1. Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstr. 30, 8006, Zurich, Switzerland

    Bruno S. Frey

  2. CREMA—Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, Zurich, Switzerland

    Bruno S. Frey

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Correspondence to Bruno S. Frey.

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Frey, B.S. Economists in the PITS?. Int Rev Econ 56, 335–346 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12232-009-0081-x

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