Potential determinants of research output: comparing economics and business

This article uses cross-country unbalanced panel data of up to 146 countries from 1996–2015 to be the first study to identify potential determinants of a country’s relative research output in Economics versus Business. This identification is important for students, professionals, universities, university departments, and research-funding agencies facing choices between profiles oriented towards economics and business. Consider the following concrete example. The finding that some distinct countries’ characteristics hinder Economics relative to Business research is valuable information for a prospective professional when choosing her career path. We do a thorough literature review to single out country characteristics having the potential to determine the flourishing of economics research vis-à-vis business research and come out with the following three hypotheses: higher policy-related data availability, higher income inequality, and lower ethnic fractionalization relatively favour economics. The regressions’ results confirm these hypotheses, and the findings are robust to two alternative fixed effects specifications, three alternative definitions of economics and business, two alternative measures of research output (publications and citations), the inclusion of meaningful control variables, and the consideration of developed and developing countries. Yet, the association between ethnic fractionalization and relative research output is limited to developing countries.