The Market for Publications in Top Economics Journals. Concentration and Export Ratios of Authors ‘ Current and Ph.D.- Affiliations for the Last Two Decades and Power Laws of Scientific Productivity*

This paper addresses the concentration of the market for publications in top economics journals. Our database consists of 15 journals with the highest average impact factor in the period 1977 to 1997. We select every fifth year within the chosen period in order to detect possible shifts in the distribution of authors ’ current and Ph.D.-affiliations. Our findings confirm that the concentration of Ph.D.-affiliations is much higher than the concentration of current affiliations. By applying population weighting to our data we find that the USA’s dominance is considerably reduced whereas Israel and the UK come out excellently. We can identify typical exporters and importers of Ph.D.s among universities. Concentration ratios like the Herfindahl-Index lack a clear time trend. Nevertheless, we dare to conclude that the position of the USA has been weakening during the last five to ten years. Finally, our data satisfy both Lotka’s law for individuals and Zipf’s law for institutions