IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ecinqu/v30y1992i4p673-88.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Bad Writing in Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Laband, David N
  • Taylor, Christopher N

Abstract

The authors find significant style differences between articles written by economists for their professional journals and articles by the same economists in the Wall Street Journal. The authors find no evidence that style influences the professional success of economists, which suggests that the private rewards to improving the quality of writing are low. Indeed, each community of scholars has probably adopted a "professionally correct" writing style from which its members diverge little. However, scholars do alter their rhetorical style to communicate effectively with audiences other than the professional community. This suggests that intra- and intergroup (written) communication by economists is efficient. Copyright 1992 by Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Laband, David N & Taylor, Christopher N, 1992. "The Impact of Bad Writing in Economics," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 30(4), pages 673-688, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:30:y:1992:i:4:p:673-88
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gregory Merlo & Katie Page & Julie Ratcliffe & Kate Halton & Nicholas Graves, 2015. "Bridging the Gap: Exploring the Barriers to Using Economic Evidence in Healthcare Decision Making and Strategies for Improving Uptake," Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 303-309, June.
    2. Suzanne Heller Clain & Karen Leppel, 2018. "Patterns in Economics Journal Acceptances and Rejections," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 63(1), pages 94-109, March.
    3. Carlos Liard-Muriente & Christina Robinson, 2015. "The Write Experience in Economics: A Case Study from Central Connecticut State University," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 21(4), pages 453-465, November.
    4. David-Jan Jansen, 2008. "Has the Clarity of Humphrey-Hawkins Testimonies Affected Volatility in Financial Markets?," DNB Working Papers 185, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    5. Dowling, Michael & Hammami, Helmi & Zreik, Ousayna, 2018. "Easy to read, easy to cite?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 100-103.
    6. Feld, Jan & Lines, Corinna & Ross, Libby, 2024. "Writing matters," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 378-397.
    7. Leland B. Yeager, 1997. "Austrian Economics, Neoclassicism, and the Market Test," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 153-165, Fall.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:30:y:1992:i:4:p:673-88. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.