Seminario 18/19: Lorenzo Ductor (Middlesex University) – Connections to Decision Makers: evidence from economics editors

Información

Abstract: Are connections to decision makers valuable? Do connections lead to better or worse decisions? And if they do, why is that? We set out to answer these questions by studying connections to the editorial board members of more than 100 economics and finance journals over the period 1990-2011. Departments double their publications in a journal when one of its faculty is present on that journal’s board. When we control for unobserved heterogeneity, the increase is still 23%. More power and long service on the editorial board lead to substantially larger increases. Effects on the number of publications at the individual level — coauthors (+6.6\%), colleagues (+6.4\%) and mentees (+12.6\%) — are highly significant. An analysis of citation patterns of faculties shows that papers published when a link to an editorial board member is present are more cited than papers published when no link is present. This suggests that, on average, the effect of any editorial favouritism is less strong than those of improved information about papers and the decision-making process and the signalling
value of a connection to an editor.