This paper asks the question: Why has the "general-to-specific" cointegrated VAR approach as developed in Europe had only limited success in the US as a tool for doing empirical macroeconomics, where what might be called a "theory comes first" approach dominates? The reason this paper highlights...

This paper aims to provide insights for those who value careful, precise communication to draft effective economics papers. It is designed to be a helpful and convenient guide, which is divided into well-defined, thought-provoking sections.

We assess the role played by advisory supervision on the early stage productivity of recent PhDs in economics using a tailor-made data set based on RePEc. After allowing for the potential effects of other relevant determinants, including gender and field of specialisation, we find as expected...

We document economists' opinions about what is worth knowing and ask (i) which research objectives economic research should embrace and (ii) which topics it should study. Almost 10,000 economic researchers from all fields and ranks of the profession participated in our global survey. Detailed...

This paper provides insights into the apparent seesaw between the generation of theoretical versus empirical economics research over time. A dynamic model considers the incentives of researchers to focus on empirical versus theoretical papers. It yields the main characteristics of the...

Using dissertation research topics found in the EconLit database and large-scale algorithmic methods that identify author demographics based on names, we explore the link between race and ethnicity and fields of economic research. We find that underrepresented racial and ethnic minority (URM)...