David N. Laband

Dry Holes in Economic Research

Between 1974 and 1996, there was a substantial increase in the emphasis on academic research in universities located in the United States and elsewhere throughout the world. This increased emphasis was, and continues to be, reflected in a variety of increased incentives for faculty to produce research, including higher salaries, reduced teaching loads, increased money for travel, on so on. Yet, as we report in this paper, during this time period the rate of uncitedness of economics papers remained constant (at 26 percent). Clearly, universities and taxpayers/supporters of universities are obtaining no enhancement of research output (in terms of citations) from the increased subsidy to faculty research. We discuss the implications of this result for the publication and organization of economic research. In particular, we discuss the fact that resources devoted to up-front screening of papers by authors and journals have risen substantially over this period, but to no avail with respect to reducing the incidence of dry holes. Copyright WWZ and Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag AG 2003.

New Estimates of Economies of Scale and Scope in Higher Education

Following Cohn, Rhine, and Santos (1989), we reestimate cost functions for 1492 private and 1450 public institutions of higher education (IHEs) in the United States, using data for fiscal year 1995–1996. Costs are modeled as a function of the level of production of three outputs: undergraduate education, graduate education, and externally funded research. We find that public and private IHEs are characterized by significantly different cost functions. At the sample means of the variables, we estimate that public and private IHEs enjoy both ray economies of scale and product-specific economies with respect to production of all three outputs. However, we also find that, at the sample means, both public and private institutions are characterized by diseconomies of scope in the production of these three outputs. Our findings suggest that both public and private IHEs could reduce their unit costs of operation by growing relative to the current mean levels of production.

Are Economists More Selfish Than Other 'Social' Scientists?

There is considerable professional disagreement among economists about whether economists are less cooperative than non-economists. It has been argued that once an individual has been schooled in the self-interest model of individual human behavior (s)he exhibits more selfish behavior than other, ostensibly similar individuals who have not been taught to fully appreciate Homo economicus. Heretofore, the empirical debate has centered around classroom experiments designed to compare the “honesty” of undergraduate economics majors versus non economics majors. However, methodological problems have plagued these studies, leaving both sides at an impasse. We offer unique and compelling real-world evidence that suggests economists are no less cooperative than non-economists. Indeed, after comparing the incidence of “cheating” on their Association dues, we find that professional economists are significantly more honest/cooperative than professional political scientists, and especially, professional sociologists.

Quality Control in Economics

This paper analyzes the editorial screening process in economics, employing data from the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Quarterly Journal of Economics. We examine three issues: the decline of critical commentary in economics, the increased referencing behavior of authors, and the decline in the citation of economic research. We find that there is empirical evidence in favor of the idea that these trends are mostly due to more ex ante investment by authors in their papers and less need for ex post quality control. Copyright 2002 by WWZ and Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag AG

DO COSTS DIFFER BETWEEN FOR-PROFIT AND NOT-FOR-PROFIT PRODUCERS OF HIGHER EDUCATION?

In theory, not-for-profit organizations will be characterized by higher production costs per unit of output than for-profit producers of otherwise-identical goods/services, since profit maximization implies cost minimization per unit of output; breaking even does not imply cost minimization and, indeed, may imply inflated costs. We explore the empirical validity of this hypothesis in the context of higher education. Using 1996 data, we estimate multiproduct cost functions for 1,450 public, 1,316 private, not-for-profit, and 176 private, for-profit institutions of higher education in the United States. We fail to find a statistically significant difference between for-profit and not-for-profit private providers, but do find a statistically significant difference between private, not-for-profit institutions and public institutions.

Economists and the Economy

Using data from a sample of the economic literature published over the years 1950 through 1988, we find substantial support for an environmental theory of idea entrepreneurship among economists. In particular, we show that the percentage of economic articles devoted to the topics of inflation and employment are related directly to the actual inflation and unemployment rates in the economy and indirectly to the growth rate of aggregate real income. Moreover, we are able to provide evidence of undirectional causality running from changes in the economic environment to changes in the composition of the economic literature. Copyright 1990 by MIT Press.

Threatened species and the spatial concentration of humans

Public policies that encourage high-density human living arrangements have been predicated explicitly on the assumption that certain spatial distributions of a fixed-size human population are less environmentally damaging than others. We examine the empirical validity of this assumption across 127 countries by analyzing whether the concentration of human presence in each country is related statistically to the percentage of species that were on the IUCN Red List in 2004. Our findings indicate that concentration of the human population is associated with reduced imperilment among amphibians but increased imperilment among reptiles, and birds.

The Impact of Intercollegiate Athletics on Employment in the Restaurant and Accommodations Industries

In this article, we analyze metropolitan and micropolitan statistical area (MSA) level data in the United States to examine the economic impact of college athletics. Specifically, we examine the relationship between total athletics revenues (aggregated across all colleges in an MSA) and MSA level employment in the accommodations and food services industries. Controlling for a variety of other factors that might influence hotel/restaurant employment within an MSA, we find a statistically significant, positive relationship between college athletics revenues and MSA employment in the food services and accommodations industries.

The Pricing of Economics Books.

Abstract Using data as reported in the JEL in 2000 and 1985, the authors examine the pricing and other characteristics of books. There has been a substantial rise in book prices, even in real terms, between the two years, which the smaller rise in average page length appears insufficient to justify. A major factor behind the rise would appear to be the increasing importance of foreign presses that not only sell at a higher average price than U.S. presses but are increasingly likely to do so. University presses and other not-for-profit publishers sell at substantially lower prices than commercial publishing houses and are more likely to publish in paperback than commercial publishing houses. The discount on paperbacks appears to have been relatively stable in the two years.

Economic well-being, the distribution of income and species imperilment

Mikkelson et al.’s (PLoS One 2(5):e444, 2007) empirical finding of a positive relationship between income inequality and species imperilment in an international context is less-than-compelling for 3 reasons: (a) findings for their limited sample size, which constitutes a relatively small fraction of all countries, may not hold in the context of a more encompassing sample of countries, (b) their aggregate analysis, which includes amphibians, birds, mammals, reptiles, and vascular plants, may mask important taxa-level differences, and (c) the absence of controls for spatial autocorrelation between countries. Using data from 133 countries, we estimate models of factors that influence species imperilment and, controlling for cross-border effects, we reproduce the Mikkelson et al. findings, then demonstrate that they are sensitive to inclusion of additional countries, model specification, and to data aggregation.