The Color of Ideas: Racial Dynamics and Citations in Economics

This paper investigates the existence of racial disparities in the dissemination of ideas using the paper citation network in economics. Exploiting a comprehensive dataset of over 330,000 publications from 1950 to 2021, combined with manually collected data from the CVs of thousands of economists, we document that papers authored by non-White scholars (Black, Hispanic, or Asian) receive 5.1% to 9.6% fewer citations than those authored by White scholars. The citation gap remains or even amplifies with increasing author seniority and conventional quality indicators and is especially pronounced for Black authors. Moreover, papers authored by non-White scholars are less likely to serve as citation bridges and are less often cited by highly cited papers as measured by the centrality indexes, limiting both their direct and indirect influence. Our analysis indicates that this disparity is not attributable to differences in research quality, author ability, or visibility. Rather, it is largely driven by homophily in citation patterns and racial clusters in networks, where scholars tend to cite authors from their racial group. These findings can be rationalized by a simple theoretical model where citation costs and peer-review preferences influence citation behavior. Then, we provide suggestive evidence that reducing information friction—thereby lowering the cost of citing—could reduce the racial citation gap by up to 50%. Finally, using natural language processing, we highlight the complementarity across racial groups in research and discuss potential losses from racial barriers to idea diffusion.