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The Rise of Research Teams: Benefits and Costs in Economics

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  • Benjamin F. Jones

Abstract

Economics research is increasingly performed in teams, and team-authored work has a large and increasing impact advantage. This article considers the benefits and costs of this "rise of teams." Among its benefits, teamwork allows individuals to aggregate knowledge in productive and novel ways. For example, as knowledge accumulates over time, individuals become narrower in their expertise, and teamwork is a natural organizational approach to aggregating expertise and maintaining one's reach. But teamwork also brings costs. For example, teamwork divides and obscures credit, which is central to the reward system of science. By clouding credit assignment, teamwork can undermine individual career progression and exacerbate issues of bias. In addressing the rise of teamwork, this paper further considers institutional innovations, especially those inspired by the hard sciences, that can help limit the costs teamwork imposes while realizing the benefits.

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  • Benjamin F. Jones, 2021. "The Rise of Research Teams: Benefits and Costs in Economics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(2), pages 191-216, Spring.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:35:y:2021:i:2:p:191-216
    DOI: 10.1257/jep.35.2.191
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    As found on the RePEc Biblio, the curated bibliography for Economics:
    1. > Economics Profession > Publishing in Economics > Teams

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    Cited by:

    1. Hadavand, Aboozar & Hamermesh, Daniel S. & Wilson, Wesley W., 2021. "Publishing Economics: How Slow? Why Slow? Is Slow Productive? Fixing Slow?," IZA Discussion Papers 14643, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Naudé, Wim, 2024. "Is the Scholarly Field of Entrepreneurship at Its End?," IZA Discussion Papers 16916, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Bernardo Mueller, 2022. "Recombination for innovation and market impact: Samples and features in hip hop music," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 929-953, July.
    4. Yiling Lin & Carl Benedikt Frey & Lingfei Wu, 2022. "Remote Collaboration Fuses Fewer Breakthrough Ideas," Papers 2206.01878, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2023.
    5. Fontana, Magda & Iori, Martina & Leone Sciabolazza, Valerio & Souza, Daniel, 2022. "The interdisciplinarity dilemma: Public versus private interests," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(7).
    6. Dennis Wesselbaum, 2023. "Understanding the Drivers of the Gender Productivity Gap in the Economics Profession," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 68(1), pages 61-73, March.
    7. Kelly, E.; & Propper, C.; & Zaranko, B.;, 2022. "Team composition and productivity: evidence from nursing teams in the English National Health Service," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 22/19, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    8. Berger, Thor & Prawitz, Erik, 2024. "Collaboration and connectivity: Historical evidence from patent records," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    9. Enzo Brox & Michael Lechner, 2024. "Teamwork and Spillover Effects in Performance Evaluations," Papers 2403.15200, arXiv.org.
    10. Minehan, Shannon N. & Wesselbaum, Dennis, 2024. "Gender, personality, and performance," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    11. Muhammad Khalid Anser & Munir Ahmad & Muhammad Azhar Khan & Abdelmohsen A. Nassani & Mohamed Haffar & Khalid Zaman, 2024. "The “IMPACT” of Web of Science Coverage and Scientific and Technical Journal Articles on the World’s Income: Scientific Informatics and the Knowledge-Driven Economy," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(1), pages 3147-3173, March.
    12. Wei Ming & Zhenyue Zhao, 2022. "Rethinking the open access citation advantage: Evidence from the “reverse‐flipping” journals," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(11), pages 1608-1620, November.
    13. Candelon, Bertrand & Joëts, Marc & Mignon, Valérie, 2024. "What makes econometric ideas popular: The role of connectivity," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(7).
    14. Brown, Christopher L., 2024. "Team production in endogenous networks," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 560-580.
    15. Fulya Y. Ersoy & Jennifer Pate, 2023. "Invisible hurdles: Gender and institutional differences in the evaluation of economics papers," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(4), pages 777-797, October.
    16. Huseyin Yildirim, 2023. "Who fares better in teamwork?," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 54(2), pages 299-324, June.
    17. Rezaei, Sarah & Rosenkranz, Stephanie & Weitzel, Utz & Westbrock, Bastian, 2024. "Social preferences on networks," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    18. Madhu Khanna, 2022. "Breakthroughs at the disciplinary nexus: Rewards and challenges for applied economists," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 104(2), pages 475-492, March.
    19. Mario Fernandes & Andreas Walter, 2023. "The times they are a-changin’: profiling newly tenured business economics professors in Germany over the past thirty years," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 93(5), pages 929-971, July.
    20. Freund, L. B., 2022. "Superstar Teams: The Micro Origins and Macro Implications of Coworker Complementarities," Janeway Institute Working Papers 2235, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    21. Alessandra Allocca, 2023. "“No Man is an Island”: An Empirical Study on Team Formation and Performance," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 389, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    22. O. Mryglod & S. Nazarovets & S. Kozmenko, 2021. "Universal and specific features of Ukrainian economic research: publication analysis based on Crossref data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 8187-8203, September.
    23. Michele Pezzoni & Fabiana Visentin, 2024. "Gender bias in team formation: the case of the European Science Foundation’s grants," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 51(2), pages 247-260.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • M54 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Labor Management
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives

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