TY - JOUR
T1 - Social networks and research output
AU - Ductor, Lorenzo
AU - Fafchamps, Marcel
AU - Goyal, Sanjeev
AU - van der Leij, Marco J.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
PY - 2014/12/1
Y1 - 2014/12/1
N2 - We study how knowledge about the social network of an individual researcher, as embodied in his coauthor relations, helps us in developing a more accurate prediction of his or her future productivity. We find that incorporating information about coauthor networks leads to a modest improvement in the accuracy of forecasts on individual output, over and above what we can predict based on the knowledge of past individual output. Second, we find that the informativeness of networks dissipates over the lifetime of a researcher's career. This suggests that the signaling content of the network is quantitatively more important than the flow of ideas.
AB - We study how knowledge about the social network of an individual researcher, as embodied in his coauthor relations, helps us in developing a more accurate prediction of his or her future productivity. We find that incorporating information about coauthor networks leads to a modest improvement in the accuracy of forecasts on individual output, over and above what we can predict based on the knowledge of past individual output. Second, we find that the informativeness of networks dissipates over the lifetime of a researcher's career. This suggests that the signaling content of the network is quantitatively more important than the flow of ideas.
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U2 - 10.1162/REST_a_00430
DO - 10.1162/REST_a_00430
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84899993695
SN - 0034-6535
VL - 96
SP - 936
EP - 948
JO - Review of Economics and Statistics
JF - Review of Economics and Statistics
IS - 5
ER -