Is Publication in the Hands of Outstanding Scientists? A Study on the Determinants of Editorial Boards Membership in Economics

This paper aims at casting light on editorial boards of leading journals in economics. This topic has been largely neglected by economists and sociologists of science, although the crucial role played by editors of prestigious journals in steering the discipline. We start our analysis by mapping the content specialization and the level of oligopoly of the contributing institutions within each journal. Then, we assess the impact of editorial boards’ interlocking and turnover on similarity between journals. In the second half of the paper we investigate the determinants of editorial board membership in leading economic journals during the decade from 1994 to 2004. We observe that the scientist’s past productivity is a strong predictor of membership. Nevertheless, other determinants are at play. Among others, we found a significant positive effect of scientist’s social connections with the members of the discipline who are entitled to decide for the appointment as editor.