Marco Piatti

The red mist? Red shirts, success and team sports

Baron von Richthofen (the Red Baron) arguably the most famous fighter pilot of all time painted his plane the vividest of red hues, making it visible and identifiable at great distance, showing an aggressive pronouncement of dominance to other pilots. Can colour affect aggression and performance and if so is it observable within team sports? This study explores the effect of red on sporting performances within a team sports arena, through empirical analysis of match results from the Australian Rugby League spanning a period of 30 years. Both the descriptive analysis and the multivariate analysis report a positive relationship. Nevertheless, more evidence is required to better understand whether teams in red do enjoy greater success controlling explicitly in a multivariate analysis for many factors that simultaneously affect performance.

Extraordinary Wealth, Globalization, and Corruption

The billionaires of the world attract significant attention from the media and the public. Surprisingly, only a limited number of studies have explored empirically the determinants of extraordinary wealth. Using a large dataset we investigate whether globalization and corruption affect extreme wealth accumulation. We find evidence that an increase in globalization increases super-affluence. In addition, we also find that an increase in corruption leads to an increase in the creation of super fortune. This supports the argument that in kleptocracies large sums are transferred into the hands of a small group of individuals.

Demographic Characteristics of AER Authors

We find not only that AER authors are quite young but that, in terms of differences between the 1980s and the 2000s, the distribution of author experience seems to have shifted leftward (become younger). We also observe that superstars’ publication performance peaks substantially later. It is also worth noting that the first article in the first issue of AER was authored by a woman, although the share of female researchers remained quite low over a long period of time, a mere 4 per cent in the 1980s. Female authorship rose during the 2001 to 2010 period, with 12.24 per cent of the authors being women. Interestingly, however, the largest share of female participation (24 per cent of the main articles) occurred in 1944, when women became the “servicewomen of the AER”.

Submission Strategies, Referees, and Awards

The number of papers submitted to AER has increased substantially over time, resulting in a decrease in the acceptance rate from 22 per cent in 1953 to 6.4 per cent in 2009. This increasing number of submissions requires a large referee pool, which in turn augments the incentive to reward referees. Using a sample of 676 referees (from 2007 to 2009), we find that those from leading institutions or with a better individual performance history are more likely to receive the AER Excellence in Refereeing Award, while being female and young reduces the probability of award reception. Receiving such an award also increases the probability of publishing in AER at a later stage. Nevertheless, referees, as opposed to board members and coeditors, are minimally published in AER (only 1.42 per cent).

Top Institutions, Top Papers and Leading Economists Publishing in AER

The demand for and supply of rankings in academia has increased drastically in the last decades, inducing almost a ranking mania. This increase does not, however, prevent us from developing various rankings in this chapter. Universities such as MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Princeton, Chicago, Stanford, Yale, and Columbia remain top-tier training grounds and dominate AER publications. Nevertheless, Israel is the top performing country in terms of per capita publications: the most cited paper was written by Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz, and the top publishers are Joseph Stiglitz and William Baumol. Most AER authors publish only once in AER (67 per cent), and a small share of articles is responsible for most of the citations.

AER Editors, Coeditors, and Board Members

Our examination of the individual profiles of three recent editors and a large set of coeditors and editorial board members reveals that around 75 per cent of the latter have a Ph.D. from a leading institution. On average, a coeditor (board member) has 39 (14) journal publications, and board members are significantly younger than coeditors. We find no indication of editorial favoritism (“connection awards”) when identifying and separately reporting three author/editor connections (departmental colleagues, same doctoral institution, same former university affiliation). Papers authored by individuals with personal ties to the editor are of no lower quality than those written by individuals unconnected to the editor.

Cooperation, Coauthorship and Alphabetical Name Ordering

Our analysis shows that between 1911 and 1920, 99 per cent of the papers were single-authored, but that number had decreased to only 28 per cent by the 2001–10 period. Today, close to so per cent of contributions are the result of cooperation between two authors, and the number of contributions listing two or more authors has increased, suggesting that division of labour has become more important. In an environment in which cooperation is increasing, it might be asked whether the process of deciding author order could raise issues. Looking at published articles in 1984–8 and 2004–8, we observe that 90.6 per cent of the articles have alphabetical name ordering. However, the probability of non-alphabetical name ordering increases substantially for articles with three or more authors.