Is Economics a House Divided? Analysis of Citation Networks
Date: 2013-02-13 By: Sina Önder, Ali (Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies)
Terviö, Marko (Aalto University and HECER)
We investigate divisions within the citation network in economics using citation data between 1990 and 2010. We consider all partitions of top institutions into two equal-sized clusters, and pick the one that minimizes cross-cluster citations. The strongest division is much stronger than could be expected to be found under idiosyncratic citation patterns, and is consistent with the reputed freshwater/saltwater division in macroeconomics. The division is stable over time, but varies across the fields of economics.
No surprises there!