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Political economy occupies a unique place at the intersection of economics and political science, being an essential part of both disciplines, as well as an area that offers special insight into issues of continuing importance in public finance and policy. This article uses journal publications to rank institutions by research productivity in political economy. An incidental byproduct is a ranking of individual scholars. Ranking methodology is developed based on the established literature. Implications for the future evolution of political economy as an interdisciplinary field are suggested and discussed.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross‐affiliation emerges as a new and fast‐developing means to promote collaboration in financial research. We find that the average number of affiliations reported per author in the top‐three finance journals increases steadily from 1.1 to 1.3 from 1995 to 2016. Scale‐free power laws characterize the resulting highly‐skewed distributions of top finance journal publications of worldwide institutions. We propose an explanation of the scale‐invariance, based on a network model featuring nonlinear growth and linear preferential attachment. The model indicates that success‐breeds‐success engenders 87% of total publications and hence the dispersion in research output, while accelerated growth of collaboration reduces the heterogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the growing literature on political dynasticism in contemporary South Asia and shifts the focus from the much-debated national level dynasties to the usually ignored dynasties operating at subnational and regional levels. Analytically, it investigates the 'moment' of succession, conceptualised as the period when new heirs are actively enrolled in a dynastic formation. Such moments of succession can be perilous moments for dynastic formations, potentially disrupting its routine functioning style. And yet, these moments allow a clear identification and opportunity for analysis of the specific dilemma that all political dynasties have to negotiate. This dilemma can be described as follows: how to reconcile (1) the need to project emerging dynastic heirs as extraordinary beings embodying the special qualities of the original dynast, with (2) the equally pressing need to downplay inherited dynastic privilege – conceptualised here using Louis Dumont's idea of 'shamefacedness' – often portrayed as an illegitimate source of power and influence in postcolonial South Asia. A successful succession, as this article argues, relies on the ability to negotiate this dilemma. To demonstrate this negotiation in practice, the article analyses two cases of dynastic succession: Abhishek Banerjee in West Bengal, India and Serniabat Sadiq Abdullah in Barishal, Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic labor markets often exhibit steep hierarchies, with institutions at the top attempting to attract newly minted doctorates from similarly situated institutions in an effort to maintain or improve their reputations. Yet, despite recent research on labor market segmentation in academe, the literature has heretofore been under-theorized. This paper provides a straightforward formal model that generates a three-tiered hierarchy of academic institutions, wherein academic departments affiliated with top-tier universities endeavor to hire only from within the group, while those in the bottom tier are unable to employ faculty with degrees from top departments. The results from statistical tests applied to data from economics departments in the U.S. indicate that top-tier departments employ 3.5 to 3.8 (2.5 to 2.9) more assistant professors from top-tier institutions, ceteris paribus, than bottom (middle) tier departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe how sexual harassment contributes to sex segregation and pay inequality in the labor market. Combining nationally representative survey data and administrative data, we show that both harassment and wages vary strongly and systematically across workplaces. Women self-report more harassment from colleagues and managers in male-dominated workplaces where wages are relatively high, and men self-report more harassment in female-dominated workplaces where wages are low. These patterns imply two ways that harassment may contribute to gender inequality. First, harassment deters women and men from applying for jobs in workplaces where they are the gender minority. A survey experiment with hypothetical job choices supports this mechanism. Respondents are highly averse to accepting jobs in workplaces with a higher harassment risk for their own gender, but less averse when people of the opposite sex are at higher risk. A second way that harassment contributes to inequality is by making workplace gender minorities leave their workplaces for new jobs. An analysis of workplace transitions supports this mechanism. Women who self-report harassment are more likely to switch to new workplaces with more female colleagues and lower pay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the professor-student network of Nobel laureates in economics. 82 of the 87 Nobelists belong to one family tree. The remaining five belong to three separate trees. There are 376 men in the graph, and five women. Karl Knies is the central-most professor, followed by Wassily Leontief. No classical and few neo-classical economists have left notable descendants. Harvard is the centralmost university, followed by Chicago and Berlin. Most candidates for the Nobel Prize belong to the main family tree, but new trees may arise for the students of Terence Gorman and Denis Sargan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of public administration, a feminist appraisal of Weber's bureaucracy has transpired gradually. In this article, we examine the gender ramifications of Weberian bureaucracy, with a specific focus on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Using the feminist critique of the field at large, and the framework of bureau men and settlement women in particular, we critically analyze Weber's ideas of an ideal bureaucracy. Our central contribution is intermeshing Stiver's critical perspectives with the theoretical frames of feminist phenomenology and feminist standpoint theory to craft a feminist model for appraising the agricultural bureaucracy in the United States. In doing so, we demonstrate how women farmers' and landowners' approach to agriculture and farm management is fundamentally different in values and orientation than the USDA's Weberian bureaucratic approach which dictates the design and implementation of agricultural policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the general usefulness of citations as a sort of test of the value of one's work in the marketplace of ideas, journals and publishers tend to use alternative bases of judgment, namely committees, in selecting candidates for the conferral of journals' best paper awards. Given that recognition—sometimes in the form of compensation and on other occasions in the form of awards—in academe is geared toward incentivizing the production of impactful research and not some less desirable goal or outcome, it is important to understand the sensitivity in the outcomes of best paper award selection processes to the types of processes used. To that end, this study compares the selection of best paper awards for journals affiliated with several of the world's top economic associations by committees to a counterfactual process that is based on citations to published studies. Our statistical exploration indicates that in most cases and for most awards, the most cited paper was not chosen. This requires further discussion as to the core characteristics that quantitatively represent the highest impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a dynamic quantitative model of occupational choice and search frictions with multiple channels of intergenerational transmission (comparative advantage, social contacts, and preferences), and use it to decompose the occupational persistence observed in the UK. In the model, workers who choose their father's occupation find jobs faster and earn lower wages, which is consistent with patterns found in UK data. Quantitatively, parental networks account for 79% of total persistence. Shutting down parental networks or the transmission of preferences improves the allocation of workers, and thus yields welfare gains, while removing the transmission of comparative advantage generates welfare losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given recent interest in social media, many brands now create content that they hope consumers will view and share with peers. While some campaigns indeed go “viral,” their value to the brand is limited if they do not boost brand evaluation or increase purchase. Consequently, a key question is how to create valuable virality, or content that is not only shared but also beneficial to the brand. Share data from hundreds of real online ads, as well as controlled laboratory experiments, demonstrate that compared with informative appeals (which focus on product features), emotional appeals (which use drama, mood, music, and other emotion-eliciting strategies) are more likely to be shared. Informative appeals, in contrast, boost brand evaluations and purchase because the brand is an integral part of the ad content. By combining the benefits of both approaches, emotional brand-integral ads boost sharing while also bolstering brand-related outcomes. The authors’ framework sheds light on how companies can generate valuable virality and the mechanisms underlying these effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cumulative advantage–commonly known as the Matthew Effect–influences academic output and careers. Given the challenge and uncertainty of gauging the quality of academic research, gatekeepers often possess incentives to prefer the work of established academics. Such preferences breach scientific norms of universalism and can stifle innovation. This article analyzes repeat authors within academic journals as a possible exemplar of the Matthew Effect. Using publication data for 347 economics journals from 1980–2017, as well as from three major generalist science journals, we analyze how articles written by repeat authors fare vis-à-vis less-experienced authors. Results show that articles written by repeat authors steadily decline in citation impact with each additional repeat authorship. Despite these declines, repeat authors also tend to garner more citations than debut authors. These contrasting results suggest both benefits and drawbacks associated with repeat authorships. Journals appear to respond to feedback from previous publications, as more-cited authors in a journal are more likely to be selected for repeat authorships. Institutional characteristics of journals also affect the likelihood of repeat authorship, as well as citation outcomes. Repeat authorships–particularly in leading academic journals–reflect innovative incentives and professional reward structures, while also influencing the intellectual content of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to analyze the nexus between CO2 emissions, urbanization, and economic activity, as well as identify whether the pollution haven hypothesis is proven in Indonesia. It utilized time series data of Indonesia during the 1971–2019 period. Furthermore, the vector error correction model (VECM) was used to determine the long-run and short-run interplay using cointegration and Granger causality approaches. The empirical results showed the pollution haven hypothesis occurred in Indonesia. A long-term relationship with CO2 emissions was observed from the model. In addition, unidirectional causality occurred from urbanization, economic growth, exports, and foreign direct investment to CO2 emissions in the short term. It was concluded that the achievement of the Paris Agreement will be successful when the committed countries are courageous in transforming their economy. However, major adjustments are needed, where all parties need to have the same vision towards net zero carbon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inheritance of wealth promotes occupational choice, but may restrict it where its use is constrained by limited markets and cultural norms. This work investigates the effects of inheriting agricultural land in rural India and finds that while larger inheritances, on average, increase future household consumption, firstborn sons do not experience these gains. For firstborns, inheriting land reduces migration and entry into nonagricultural work. In contrast, inheriting land does not influence occupational choice or migration for latter-born sons. I attribute these differences, in part, to a cultural norm of parental support incumbent on firstborns and its interaction with inherited land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study estimates scale and scope economies of academic libraries. Previous studies using Cobb-Douglas cost function or a linear cost function have limitations in measuring multiple outputs of academic libraries since they used circulation as a single output measure. They also have limitations in estimating long-run cost functions of academic libraries. Some researchers applied the translog cost function to public libraries and recognized the multiple-output nature of libraries, but they mostly failed to incorporate multiple output measures in their analyses empirically. This study develops multiple aggregate output measures and applies the flexible fixed cost quadratic function to academic libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-consumption scholarship has been ideologically one-sided. It has established a research domain aligned with projects favored by the global political left, such as being environmentally sustainable, consuming ethically, and resisting corporate capitalism, while overlooking strains of anti-consumption thought and action driven by conservative interests. It has advanced knowledge of individuals, their reasoning, and market behavior patterns in the here and now, but has neglected the state-sponsored and temporal dimensions of anti-consumption phenomena. This article seeks to redress this imbalance and broaden the field through a historical counternarrative illustrating right-wing prohibitions, boycotts of media content, brands, and companies, and, most recently, resistance to sustainable consumption. The different interests served, effects on consumption behavior, and market and societal impacts of these anti-consumption efforts in the American experience are analyzed. Implications for the domain of anti-consumption and macromarketing research and opportunities for potential global study are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines survey data on the views of editors of economics journals on common critiques of the discipline, ethics and editorial practices, and the role of prestige and status in publishing. We utilize an ordered probit model to investigate whether editors or journal characteristics are systematically related to editors' views, controlling for gender and editorial position. Regression results show that editors from top-ranked journals are less likely to agree with common disciplinary critiques, more likely to support market solutions and less likely to agree with concerns about editorial practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study within one theoretical framework two related phenomena - ingratiation by subordinates and favoritism of superiors towards their employees.We express ingratiation by opinion conformity of the worker when reporting his opinion to the manager. Favoritism of the manager is inferred from a bias when reporting to a firm her observation of the worker's performance. We show interdependences of favoritism and ingratiation by investigating their influence on wages and profit. We study the more sophisticated manager and firm that try to infer the worker's opinion and the manager's observation. Such higher degrees of sophistication can mitigate the consequences of ingratiation and favoritism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an empirical analysis of the gender gap for farming in the United States. Using the 2012 U.S. Census of Agriculture we show that farms operated by women earn forty percent less farm income than farms operated by men after controlling for farm and operator characteristics. These findings indicate that farming is one of the most unequal professions in the United States today. Further, we investigate whether three forms of sustainable agriculture improve incomes for women farmers. We find that only farms engaging in Community Supported Agriculture experience a marked decline in the gender income gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argument: This paper argues that the economics discipline is highly concentrated, which may inhibit scientific innovation and change in the future. The argument is based on an empirical investigation of six dimensions of concentration in economics between 1956 and 2016 using a large-scale data set. The results show that North America accounts for nearly half of all articles and three quarters of all citations. Twenty institutions reap a share of 42 percent of citations, five journals a share of 28.5 percent, and 100 authors a share of 15.5 percent. A total of 2.8 percent of citations may be attributed to heterodox schools of thought. Also top articles are concentrated along these dimensions. Overall, concentration has strongly increased over the last six decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strength of weak ties is among the most important theories in the social sciences. One paradoxical element of the theory has been widely understood and valued—that weak ties connect disparate regions of social structure. Less appreciated, however, is the arguably more paradoxical implication that someone only weakly connected to another would provide value beyond that which is provided by the recipient's (ego's) strong ties. Once this paradoxical feature of the theory and associated empirical literatures is acknowledged, the interests of the resource provider (alter) demand consideration. To do so faithfully requires first, the concession that different types of content can be transmitted across ties (e.g., financial, informational, physical, social) and content varies in important ways that relate to alter's interests and concerns. This article considers social network content and the strength of ties that provide different forms of it. The case of startups is used as a fruitful strategic research site because of the varied resources required at various stages of the startup process. Novel insights are proposed concerning what content flows across different types of social relationships in the context of "nascent" entrepreneurship. Examples from other contexts such as job search are also discussed to exemplify scope. Importantly, this article takes the perspective of the resource provider, alter, and considers her concerns about trust, misuse, and unauthorized transfer in dyadic exchange. In the process, a second paradoxical feature of the theory is identified and theorized, which usefully reveals the boundaries of exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do general interest journals set the trends in research attention to particular topics, or is it field journals that have greater initial influence? In this paper, we focus on the subfield of environmental economics and attempt to empirically identify whether it has been the leading general interest journals or the top environmental economics field journal that has set the research trends on climate change, air pollution, water pollution, and other topics. We use textual analysis and Granger causality tests to investigate the question of which journals lead in publication of papers related to these topics in environmental economics. Our results indicate that leadership depends on the topic; however, there is some evidence that the top field journal in environmental economics generally took the lead in more controversial topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public administration is a relatively young field with a growing academic community. Against the background of enduring discussions about theory and increasing research output and diversification within the field, the authors apply the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse that combines discourse theories and a social constructionist tradition to the exemplary case of "public value" research. The authors scrutinize 50 articles from 12 journals over 18 years to trace the development of public value as a concept in public administration research. Drawing from this exemplary case, they develop propositions and propose a framework for knowledge construction that is uniquely characterized as public administration. From the anchor points of manageability, economization, and democratic accountability, the authors develop a framework for analyzing and investigating knowledge development in other concepts such as network governance, representative bureaucracy, and coproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We characterize the factors that determine who becomes an inventor in the United States, focusing on the role of inventive ability ("nature") versus environment ("nurture"). Using deidentified data on 1.2 million inventors from patent records linked to tax records, we first show that children's chances of becoming inventors vary sharply with characteristics at birth, such as their race, gender, and parents' socioeconomic class. For example, children from high-income (top 1%) families are 10 times as likely to become inventors as those from below-median income families. These gaps persist even among children with similar math test scores in early childhood—which are highly predictive of innovation rates—suggesting that the gaps may be driven by differences in environment rather than abilities to innovate. We directly establish the importance of environment by showing that exposure to innovation during childhood has significant causal effects on children's propensities to invent. Children whose families move to a high-innovation area when they are young are more likely to become inventors. These exposure effects are technology class and gender specific. Children who grow up in a neighborhood or family with a high innovation rate in a specific technology class are more likely to patent in exactly the same class. Girls are more likely to invent in a particular class if they grow up in an area with more women (but not men) who invent in that class. These gender- and technology class–specific exposure effects are more likely to be driven by narrow mechanisms, such as role-model or network effects, than factors that only affect general human capital accumulation, such as the quality of schools. Consistent with the importance of exposure effects in career selection, women and disadvantaged youth are as underrepresented among high-impact inventors as they are among inventors as a whole. These findings suggest that there are many "lost Einsteins"—individuals who would have had highly impactful inventions had they been exposed to innovation in childhood—especially among women, minorities, and children from low-income families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journal editors serve a vital, powerful role in academic fields. They set research priorities, serve as gatekeepers for research, play a critical role in advancing junior scholars as reviewers and eventually into editorial roles, build extensive networks, and gain valuable insight into the behavior and preferences of reviewers and scholars. This article analyzes data collected from leading public administration journals in 2017 to investigate the role of women as gatekeepers of public administration knowledge. The data illustrate a clear underrepresentation of women on editorial boards. Drawing from these data, research on journal editorships, and feminist theory, the authors present a critique of the current state of public administration research and a discussion of a way forward. They conclude with a proposal for how all public administration scholars (junior, senior, men, and women), journal leadership, and academic departments can move toward increasing women's representation in these important positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature concerning the ranking of economists largely examines numbers of articles and citations or functions of those variables. This is appropriate since economists primarily affect each other through a network of articles and citations. Though difficult to quantify, economists also affect broader societal discussions about issues and public policy. Using the concept of network centrality, this paper creates eight measures of an economist’s influence through the traditional network of papers and citations and the more recent network of internet links. Those measures are combined using factor analysis to create a ranking of Nobel Prize-winning economists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs a unique data set on articles, authors, and editors of the top general interest journals in economics to investigate the role of social connections in the publication process. Ties between editors and authors are identified based on their academic histories. About 43% of the articles published in these journals are authored by scholars connected to one editor at the time of the publication. Ph.D. students and faculty colleagues of an editor also improve their publication outcomes when this editor is in charge of a journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on marketing within PSE tends to focus on homogeneous groups of high-status organisations. This study ameliorates this gap in the literature, conducting a comparative analysis of promotional materials produced by public universities and community colleges in Ontario, Canada. We find that these two groups draw on unique strategies to communicate their quality to external constituents. Public universities emphasise faculty and institutional-level accomplishments, such as research grants and rankings. Meanwhile, community colleges, lacking access to these symbolic resources, employ corporate-like strategies, such as taglines and non-traditional logos. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Crime and Justice has been published by the University of Chicago Press since 1979, originally as a hardcover annual journal and more recently both in print and electronically. In 2016-17, it was possible to investigate the scholarly influence of 374 articles published in 44 volumes between 1979 and 2015, according to Google Scholar and the Web of Science. The most-cited articles and authors are identified, adjusting the number of citations for time at risk of citation since publication date and for the number of articles published by each author. Scholarly influence was also examined by identifying characteristics of the most-cited articles and by reviewing online access to articles. Articles on explanations and theories of crime and delinquency were most likely to be cited; the most-cited article was “Family Factors as Correlates and Predictors of Juvenile Conduct Problems and Delinquency” by Rolf Loeber and Magda Stouthamer-Loeber (1986). The most-accessed scholar was David P. Farrington; his most-accessed article was “Understanding and Preventing Bullying” (1993). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on birth order has consistently shown that later-borns have lower educational attainment than first-borns; however, it is not known whether there are birth order patterns in college major. Given evidence that parents disproportionately invest in first-born children, there are likely to be birth order patterns attributable to differences in both opportunities and preferences, related to ability, human capital specialization through parent-child transfers of knowledge, and personality. Birth order patterns in college major specialization may shed light on these explanatory mechanisms and may also account for long-term birth order differences in educational and labour market outcomes. Using Swedish population register data and sibling fixed effects, we find large birth order differences in university applications. First-borns are more likely to apply to, and graduate from, medicine and engineering programs at university, while later-borns are more likely to study journalism and business programs, and to attend art school. We also find that these birth order patterns are stronger in high-socioeconomic status families and that differences in college major explain approximately half of the within-family birth order differences in long-term earnings. These results indicate that early life experiences and parental investment shape sibling differences in ability, preferences, and ambitions even within the shared environment of the family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With rising costs, mounting student debt, and many schools experiencing financial hardship, the higher education industry faces unwanted scrutiny from the popular media and political sector. College athletics too have come under close examination because of rising costs and internal subsidies. In this paper, we provide estimates of the per-student costs of college athletic programs for US colleges and universities by the number of undergraduate students enrolled, National Collegiate Athletic Association division, and whether the institution is public or private. These estimates find significant potential for cost spreading, so that costs per-student fall as the number of students rises. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many working women will experience sexual harassment at some point in their careers. While some report this harassment, many leave their jobs to escape the harassing environment. This mixed-methods study examines whether sexual harassment and subsequent career disruption affect women’s careers. Using in-depth interviews and longitudinal survey data from the Youth Development Study, we examine the effect of sexual harassment for women in the early career. We find that sexual harassment increases financial stress, largely by precipitating job change, and can significantly alter women’s career attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional media in India has tremendous presence. However Internet has brought a massive transformation in advertising. With more and more people using internet, corporate companies tend to believe that advertising on internet can be more impactful. However, this notion is somewhat not shared by the copywriters, the people behind the words of the advertisements who consider that the content can make the maximum impact more in traditional advertising as compared to interactive media when it comes to informative content. As a matter of fact, copywriters of maximum advertising agencies tend to think more about content in traditional media as compared to interactive media, where they believe that technology overcomes the words. But the advertisers feel the other way. An important aspect of advertising is the content and the information it provides. The advertisement content plays crucial role in informing the customer about the product or service and in the later stages also helps in conversion of sale. If the content is projected the right way, the probability of a customer being positively influenced regarding the product or service is high. Hence in order to bring a clear light to the subject, a research study was conducted on copywriters across India to understand which type of advertising supported better scores of informational advertisement content. The study was conducted on 237 copywriters in India, covering major cities of India where both type of advertising was prevalent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines if and how the elite professions of law and medicine have managed to maintain their exclusivity in a period of educational expansion in Norway. The extent to which these professions disproportionately recruit students with socio-economically advantageous backgrounds is seen as an indication of intergenerational closure. Using registry data covering the entire population of Norway over a 26-year time span, we show that even though these two professions have experienced growing numbers of candidates, they manage, partly due to different institutional strategies, to maintain their exclusivity. Parents’ income and self-recruitment are relatively stable and important factors for the recruitment in both fields, although these trends are somewhat higher in law than in medicine. Drawing on Turner’s (1960) ideal-typical concepts of contest and sponsor mobility, we pinpoint institutional differences between the types of education provided for both groups and how these have adapted to meet the expansion in candidates seeking to qualify as lawyers and doctors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We investigate whether politicians whose family relatives previously served in parliament and cabinet enjoy a competitive 'legacy advantage' in progressing from the backbenches to cabinet. This advantage may stem from two potential mechanisms: a direct effect attributable to the informational advantages of legacies or an indirect effect that operates through greater electoral strength. We evaluate the relative contribution of each mechanism using candidate-level data from Irish parliamentary elections and cabinets from 1944 to 2016. Our results reveal that politicians with a family history in cabinet do enjoy an advantage in cabinet selection, and that this advantage cannot be attributed simply to greater electoral popularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The review process for academic journals in economics has grown vastly more extensive over time. Journals demand more revisions, and papers have become bloated with numerous robustness checks and extensions. Even if the extra resulting revisions do on average lead to improved papers-a claim that is debatable-the cost is enormous. We argue that much of the time involved in these revisions is a waste of research effort. Another cause for concern is the level of disagreement amongst referees, a pattern that suggests a high level of arbitrariness in the review process. To identify and highlight what is going right and what is going wrong in the reviewing process, we wrote to a sample of former editors of the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Econometrica, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Journal of Financial Economics, and asked them for their thoughts about what might improve the process. We found a rough consensus that referees for top journals in economics tend to make similar, correctable mistakes. The italicized quotations throughout this paper are drawn from our correspondence with these editors and our own experience. Their insights are consistent with our own experiences as editors at the Journal of Finance and the Review of Financial Studies. Our objective is to highlight these mistakes and provide a roadmap for how to avoid them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how recruitment practices have changed over time. Networks and contacts are more important today for labor market entry than was the case in the latter half of the twentieth century. There may be two explanations for this: the short-run explanation and the long-run explanation. The short-run explanation derives from fluctuations in unemployment. When unemployment is high, competition for every vacancy is tougher and networks become more important for the job seeker. This has been the case in Sweden since 1991, when unemployment increased to new levels not experienced since the 1930s. In the long run, there has been a change in recruitment practices due to institutional change. A clear pattern is that the importance of social networks has increased, while the significance of public institutions (i.e. the Public Employment Service) has decreased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the influence of class size on student academic achievement is important for university instructors, administrators, and students. The article examines the influence of class size — a small section versus a large section — in introductory political science courses on student grades in two comparable semesters. It is expected that students in the small-class section will perform significantly better on exams than students in the large-class section. The empirical analyses demonstrate, however, that class size does not significantly influence grades. Instead, prior political science knowledge, ACT scores, and course attendance significantly and positively influence student exam grades as well as final course grades. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]