Chris Blattman

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The American bias in academic publishing

…papers written about the US are far more likely to be published in the top five economics journals, even after the quality of research has been partially controlled for through fixed-effects for the authors’ institutional affiliations; the estimates suggest that papers on the US are 2.6 percentage points more likely to be published in the top-five journals.

This is a large effect because only 1.5 percent of all papers written about countries other than the US are published in the top-five journals.

That from a new World Bank research paper by Das, Do, Shaines and Srinivasan. It has many interesting bits. Here is another:

China and India report more publications than all other countries, but twice as much research is produced on China as on India.

For those particularly interested in China-India comparisons, the last finding is puzzling since India has always produced good economists, now spread over various U.S. institutions, who could arguably contribute to research on the country.

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