The elite in economics

Abstract

We use a sample consisting of economists working in 2007 in the world top 81 Economics departments, and Econometric Society Fellows working elsewhere. Productivity is based in each individual’s publications in four journal equivalent classes. We identify three elites consisting of 123, 332, and 908 researchers in a total sample of 2,605 scholars, which are partitioned into the U.S., the European Union, and the rest of the world. We investigate the following questions. (1) The “funneling effect” from countries where elite members obtain their first degree, to countries where they earn a Ph.D., and to countries where they work in 2007. (2) The clustering in a few U.S. institutions. (3) The distribution into those who study and work in the same country (stayers), those who study their Ph.D. abroad but come back home to work (brain circulation), and those who migrate after completing their education at home, plus those who remain abroad after studying the Ph.D. (two forms of brain drain). (4) The research gap favoring the U.S. (5) The elite in Economics versus other scientific disciplines. (6) We investigate questions 1 to 4 above for the subset of economists that earned a Ph.D. at most 25 years before 2007