Economists behaving badly: Publications in predatory journals

The extent of publishing in predatory journals in economics is examined in this paper. A simple model of researcher behavior is presented to explore those factors motivating an economist or other academic to publish in predatory journals as defined by Beall (2015). Beall’s lists are used to identify predatory journals and publishers included in the Research Papers in Economics archives. Once identified, the affiliations of authors publishing in these outlets are determined in order to identify the characteristics of those publishing in predatory journals. The geographic dispersion of authorship is widespread. A very small subset of authors is registered on RePEc. Around forty-five percent of registered authors who publish in predatory journals in the data set have six or fewer publications. A surprising number of authors who are in the RePEc top 5% also published in predatory journals in 2015