All Rights Reserved
AccessEcon LLC 2006, 2008.
Powered by MinhViet JSC

 
Jussi T. S. Heikkilä
 
''Recombination of ideas and the direction of inventive activity in economic growth research: Evidence from the Journal of Economic Growth''
( 2023, Vol. 43 No.1 )
 
 
We explore the inventive activity and recombinant ideas in the field of economic growth research by analyzing the Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification codes assigned to articles published in the Journal of Economic Growth. The average number of JEL codes, authors, keywords, pages and references per article have increased over time, consistent with the increasingly complex idea combinations. Research is concentrated around specific JEL codes (O4 and O1), but the concentration has decreased, suggesting an increasing variety of field-crossing idea combinations. We observe a negative association between the number of JEL codes and received citations. Moreover, having no JEL code from the O class is negatively associated with received citations. The findings suggest that, on average, articles combining ideas from more than two fields and articles focusing on atypical topics are less likely to become influential.
 
 
Keywords: Allocation of attention, recombinant ideas, economic growth, JEL classification codes
JEL: A1 - General Economics: General Econ
O4 - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity: General
 
Manuscript Received : Apr 11 2022 Manuscript Accepted : Mar 30 2023

  This abstract has been downloaded 280 times                The Full PDF of this paper has been downloaded 166541 times