Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP16115
Authors: Arun Advani; Elliott Ash; David Cai; Imran Rasul
Abstract: How does economics compare to other social sciences in its study of issues related to race and ethnicity? We assess this using a corpus of 500,000 academic publications in economics, political science, and sociology. Using an algorithmic approach to classify race-related publications, we document that economics lags far behind the other disciplines in the volume and share of race-related research, despite having higher absolute volumes of research output. Since 1960, there have been 13,000 race-related publications in sociology, 4,000 in political science, and 3,000 in economics. Since around 1970, the share of economics publications that are race-related has hovered just below 2% (although the share is higher in top-5 journals); in political science the share has been around 4% since the mid-1990s, while in sociology it has been above 6% since the 1960s and risen to over 12% in the last decade. Finally, using survey data collected from the Social Science Prediction Platform, we find economists tend to overestimate the amount of race-related research in all disciplines, but especially so in economics.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: A11; Z13
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| economics (A13) | volume of race-related research (J15) |
| sociology (Z10) | volume of race-related research (J15) |
| political science (D72) | volume of race-related research (J15) |
| focus on racial inequalities (J15) | contribution to social justice (I24) |