an analysis of parochialism at the jpe and qje

The Journal of Socio-Economics 36 (2007) 266–274

An analysis of parochialism at the JPE and QJE

Marshall H. Medoff ∗Department of Economics, California State University, Long Beach,

1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90840, USA

Accepted 21 November 2005

Abstract

Does a journal affiliated with a particular ideological or political belief, intellectual tradition, or method-ological approach have parochial loyalties to their faculty members and doctorates? Examination of articlespublished in the Journal of Political Economy (affiliated with the University of Chicago) and the QuarterlyJournal of Economics (affiliated with Harvard University) in 1990 found that articles by Harvard faculty andtheir doctorates are not less likely to be selected as lead articles in the JPE and articles by Chicago facultyand their doctorates are not more likely to be selected in the lead position in the JPE. Articles by Harvardfaculty and their doctorates are not more likely to be selected in the lead position in the QJE and Chicagofaculty and their doctorates are not less likely to have their articles selected in the lead position in the QJE.In addition, articles by authors with parochial connections to the JPE or the QJE do not publish articles oflesser quality. Articles by Harvard faculty and Chicago faculty who publish in the JPE are statistically andnumerically of higher quality than authors without such parochial connections and this quality differentialdoes not diminish over time.© 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

JEL classification: A11; A14

Keywords: Parochialism; Citation analysis

1. Introduction

For academic economists, professional rewards are based, in large part, on publication success.Publication in economics journals is a necessary condition for tenure, promotion, peer recognition,influence, reputation, and mobility. An economist who wishes to publish in an academic economicsjournal must receive a favorable evaluation from an anonymous peer referee that the researchrepresents a significant contribution to the economics literature. Peer review takes two forms:

∗ Tel.: +1 562 985 5077; fax: +1 562 985 5804.E-mail address: [email protected].

1053-5357/$ – see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.socec.2005.11.044

M.H. Medoff / The Journal of Socio-Economics 36 (2007) 266–274 267

single-blind (the author does not know the identity of the referee, but the referee knows theauthor’s identity) and double-blind (neither the author nor the referee knows the identity of theother).

There is some evidence from previous studies that editorial favoritism exists in the single-blindreview process. Blank (1991) analyzed the effects of single-blind versus double-blind refereeingon papers submitted to the American Economic Review between 1987 and 1989. She foundthat under the double-blind review process, acceptance rates were lower and referee commentsmore critical for authors affiliated with top universities (ranks 6–50). Laband and Piette (1994a)examined 1051 articles published in 28 top economics journals in 1984. Using the number ofcitations received in the subsequent 5-year period as a measure of an article’s quality, they foundthat articles published by journals using a double-blind review process systematically receivemore citations than articles published in journals using the single-blind review process. Medoff(2003) found that journal editors use their personal ties and institutional connections to persuadehigh-quality authors to submit their papers to them in exchange for a reduction in the transactioncosts involved in the review process.

Critics of the single-blind review process also charge that certain journals associated with aparticular “school of thought” do not always evaluate research papers objectively.1 Two casesin point are the Quarterly Journal of Economics (affiliated with Harvard University) and theJournal of Political Economy (affiliated with the University of Chicago). It has been alleged thatthe publication decisions of these two journals are influenced by their parochial loyalties to thefaculty members and doctorates of each journal’s home school.2 Yotopoulous (1961) reportedthat, in the 10-year period from 1950 to 1959, 14.5% of the pages in the Quarterly Journal ofEconomics were from Harvard authors, while Chicago authors accounted for 15.6% of the pagesin the Journal of Political Economy. Graves et al. (1982) found that between 1974 and 1978over 1400 pages of the 2748 published by the economics faculty at Chicago came from threeeconomics journals affiliated with the University of Chicago, whereas the Harvard economicsfaculty published less than 400 pages in the same three journals.

These studies are not determinative that parochialism influences the publication criteria inthe peer review process. The methodological problem is that parochialism is difficult to detectfrom acceptance rates for several reasons. First, most researchers do not have access to journalsubmissions which are necessary to compare the characteristics of published and rejected authors.Second, an editor’s choice of referees may predetermine the publication decision about a researchpaper. An editor may assign a paper to referees who are ideologically biased (in either direction)towards an author. Third, authors’ decisions about which journal to submit their papers may beinfluenced by their concerns, positively or negatively, about parochialism. Fourth, examinationof the number of article pages published in a home journal does not control for the number ofmanuscripts submitted or the quality of the articles published.

It is possible to indirectly detect the presence of parochialism from published articles. Ifparochialism at a home journal exists, one would expect to find such favoritism reflected in the

1 Forty-five leading economists (including four Nobel Laureates) signed an open statement to the economics profes-sion expressing concern that some economics journals are implementing and maintaining intellectual monopolies in themarketplace of economic ideas (American Economic Review, 1992, p. xxv).

2 Shepherd charges that “some journals themselves are known to apply consistent biases in favor of their parochialviewpoints, and some scholars are known to be prejudiced in assessing others works. Editors themselves may applysuch preferences. Authors facing this array of possible biases will naturally seek to avoid the shoals and to benefit fromfavoritism, where they know it to be” (Shepherd, 1995, pp. 118–119).

268 M.H. Medoff / The Journal of Socio-Economics 36 (2007) 266–274

editorial judgments made by the journal about the relative significance of articles by those authorswith and without parochial connections to the publishing journal. The empirical question this studyaddresses is whether parochialism exists at journals associated with a particular school of thought.Do authors with a parochial connection to a journal associated with a distinct school of thoughtsystematically receive preferential treatment disproportionate to the merits of their research ascompared to the authors without such connections?

2. Data and model

The data for this study comes from articles published in the Journal of Political Economy (JPE)affiliated with the department of economics at the University of Chicago and the Quarterly Journalof Economics (QJE) affiliated with the department of economics at Harvard University. Detailedinformation was collected on the 61 articles published in the JPE and 38 articles published in theQJE in 1990. Notes, comments, replies, and rejoinders were excluded. The information collectedincluded length and placement position of the article and name(s), university affiliation(s), anddoctoral granting institution(s) of the author(s).

Laband and Piette (1994b, p. 198) argue that “lead articles are published in that positionprecisely because the editors expect these articles to have special relevance to the readership.” Apaper chosen by a journal to be the lead article sends a market signal to members of the economicsprofession. The signal provides readers a means for identifying research that is expected to pro-vide the greatest substantive value and also provides non-monetary compensation – recognitionfor research excellence – to the author. The empirical question is whether parochialism undulyinfluences whether an author is selected to be the lead article in the JPE or the QJE (holding authorquality and article length constant). The specification of the lead article equation is:

LEADARTICLEi = b0 + b1 AUTHORCITES, 70 − 89i + b2 PAGESi

+ b3 HARVARDFACQJEi + b4 HARVARDPHDQJEi

+ b5 HARVARDFACJPEi + b6 HARVARDPHDJPEi

+ b7 CHICAGOFACQJEi + b8 CHICAGOPHDQJEi

+ b9 CHICAGOFACJPEi + b10 CHICAGOPHDJPEi (1)

The dependent variable, LEAD ARTICLE, equals one if the article written by author i is in thelead position for each of the 1990 issues of the JPE and QJE. Author quality (AUTHORCITES,70–89) is measured by the total number of citations received by author i (or the average formulti-authored articles) during the prior 20 years (1970–1989), excluding self-citations. The totalnumber of citations an author has received in the past is an indicator of the expected scientificcontribution of the current article as well as a measure of the reputational capital of the author. Thenumber of pages of each article is standardized to American Economic Review—equivalent-sizepages (PAGES). Higher quality research, generally, requires greater exposition than shorter lesssubstantive research.

In the 1960s and the 1970s, the monetarists and the Keynesians were divided ideologicallyover fundamental philosophical issues. The Keynesians were based primarily at Harvard, while themonetarists were at Chicago. Harvard and Chicago economists, either by choice or editorial deci-sion, published very little in the home journal of the other. Because fundamental ideological beliefstend to be subjective, intellectual barriers between the two schools of thought continue to persist


today. The only difference is that the ideological battles between Harvard and Chicago evolved intoa schism between New Classical economists (Chicago) and Post-Keynesian economists (Harvard)regarding methodological approach, intellectual tradition, and political beliefs.3 The source ofthis rift stems from irreconcilable epistemological differences. The presence of parochial loyaltyat the QJE and the JPE should manifest itself not only in an ideological preference for articles bytheir respective faculty and doctorates at Harvard and Chicago, but an unfavorable or antagonisticview of the scientific merit of the research by those in the other school of thought camp.

Eight binary variables are used to encompass the range of parochialism between authors andthe two publishing journals:

(1) HARVARDFACQJE: Author i is a Harvard economics faculty department member and whosearticle appeared in the QJE.

(2) HARVARDPHDQJE: Author i received a PhD from Harvard and whose article appeared inthe QJE.

(3) HARVARDFACJPE: Author i is a Harvard economics department faculty member and whosearticle appeared in the JPE.

(4) HARVARDPHDJPE: Author i received a PhD from Harvard and whose article appeared inthe JPE.

(5) CHICAGOFACQJE: Author i is a Chicago economics department faculty member and whosearticle appeared in the QJE.

(6) CHICAGOPHDQJE: Author i received a PhD from Chicago and whose article appeared inthe QJE.

(7) CHICAGOFACJPE: Author i is a Chicago economics department faculty member and whosearticle appeared in the JPE.

(8) CHICAGOPHDJPE: Author i received a PhD from Chicago and whose article appeared inthe JPE.

If parochialism exists at the JPE and the QJE, then one would expect to find that articles byChicago faculty and their doctorates are more likely to be selected as lead articles in the JPE(b9 > 0, b10 > 0) and less likely to be a lead article in the QJE (b7 < 0, b8 < 0). Conversely, articlesby Harvard faculty and their doctorates should be more likely to be selected as a lead article inthe QJE (b3 > 0, b4 > 0) and less likely to be selected as a lead article in the JPE (b5 < 0, b6 < 0).4

3. Empirical results

Since the lead article/not lead article journal decision is a dichotomous variable, Eq. (1) isestimated using the probit model. The empirical results appear in Table 1, Column 1. Authorquality is significantly positive; the higher the quality of the author, the greater the probability the

3 Lucas (a leading new classical economist at Chicago) said of post-Keynesian economists, “Post-Keynesian economists,well, I don’t know whether to take them seriously” (Klamer, 1984, p. 35).

4 In 1990, of the 61 articles published in the JPE, Harvard faculty published 6, Harvard doctorates published 10, Chicagofaculty published 5, and Chicago doctorates published 12 articles. Of the 38 articles published in the QJE, Harvard facultypublished 6, Harvard doctorates published 11, Chicago faculty published 1, and Chicago doctorates published 5 articles.There was only one Harvard faculty member with a doctorate from Chicago who published in the JPE. The reportedempirical results were unchanged when this author was excluded from the sample of articles.


Table 1Probit estimation results

Independent variables Dependent variable

Lead article = 1 Number of citations (1991–2000)

CONSTANT −.1197 (1.03) −48.7026 (.51)AUTHORCITES, 70–89 .4470E-4 (1.58)a .0080 (1.57)a

PAGES .0112 (1.74)a 1.8015 (1.61)a

HARVARDFACQJE .1357 (.81) 16.2659 (.51)HARVARDPHDQJE −.0581 (.43) −12.8102 (.47)CHICAGOFACQJE −.0966 (.28) 37.4203 (.57)CHICAGOPHDQJE .3302 (2.28)b .2109 (.01)HARVARDFACJPE −.0343 (.19) 95.4980 (2.79)c

HARVARDPHDJPE .0054 (.04) −15.6530 (.58)CHICAGOFACJPE −.2744 (1.69)a 155.7200 (4.86)c

CHICAGOPHDJPE .1139 (1.11) 34.6676 (1.68)a

JOURNALQUALITY – .5685 (.48)COAUTHOR – 6.3665 (.47)Log likelihood −1691.04 −1543.22

Absolute value of t-statistics in parentheses.a Significant at the .10 level.b Significant at the .05 level.c Significant at the .01 level.

journal will choose that paper to be the lead article. Longer papers are significantly more likelyto be selected as lead articles than shorter papers.

Only two of the binary parochialism variables are statistically significant. Chicago facultymembers who publish in the JPE are significantly less likely to have their articles selected to bein the lead position and Chicago doctorates who publish in the QJE are significantly more likelyto have their articles selected in the lead position. These two results are the exact opposite ofwhat one would expect to find if parochialism were present at the QJE or the JPE. In addition, thestatistical insignificance of the other six parochialism variables suggests that articles by Harvardfaculty and their doctorates are not less likely to be selected as lead articles in the JPE and Chicagofaculty and their doctorates are not more likely to be selected in the lead in the JPE. Articles byHarvard faculty and their doctorates are not more likely to be selected in the lead position in theQJE and Chicago faculty and their doctorates are not less likely to have their articles selected inthe lead position in the QJE.

A second way to detect the existence of parochialism from published articles is to determineif there are differences in quality by authors with parochial connections to the JPE or QJE. DoHarvard affiliated authors have lower quality articles appearing in the QJE than Chicago affiliatedauthors? Do Chicago affiliated authors have lower quality articles appearing in the JPE thanHarvard affiliated authors?

Following Laband and Piette (1994b), the measure of an article’s quality is the total numberof citations an article receives in the subsequent 10 years (1991–2000) following publication,excluding self-citations.5 This is now the dependent variable (CITES, 1991–2000) in Eq. (1).6

5 The limitations in the use of citations are discussed and dismissed in Leibowitz and Palmer (1988). They ask rhetori-cally: if an article is considered to be a high-quality scientific contribution, then why does it generate only a few citations?.

6 All citation figures were obtained from the Social Sciences Citation Index, 1970–2000.


Differences in the quality of the JPE and the QJE are controlled for by adding to Eq. (1)the Laband and Piette (1994c) 1990 normalized weight (0–100) of the relative impact articlespublished in each journal have on the economics profession (JOURNALQUALITY: JPE = 79.1,QJE = 64.5). It has been argued that the expansion of applications in economics plus the increas-ingly technical expertise required to produce research in economics has made the efficiency gainsfrom collaboration more pronounced and enhances the quality of a paper (McDowell and Melvin,1983). The variable COAUTHOR equals one if article i had two or more authors is added to Eq.(1).

Since the dependent variable, the number of citations received from 1991–2000, is left censoredat zero the Tobit maximum likelihood estimation technique is used. The empirical results appearin Table 1, Column 2.7 As expected, author quality and article length have a significantly positiveimpact on the number of subsequent citations an article receives. Journal quality is positive, butnot statistically significant. This is probably due to the fact that the JPE and the QJE are both suchhigh quality, high impact journals that there is relatively little quality variation between the twojournals.

Only three of the parochial variables are statistically significantly different from zero. Chicagofaculty, Chicago doctorates and Harvard faculty who publish in the JPE have a significantlypositive impact on the number of subsequent citations an article receives. A test of the nullhypothesis of equality between the coefficients of these three variables found that Chicago facultyarticles in the JPE receive statistically more citations than Harvard faculty articles in the JPE, whoin turn, receive statistically more citations than Chicago doctorate articles in the JPE.

It is important to point out the meaning of the phrase “statistically significantly differentfrom zero” used in the previous paragraph. It means that under the null hypothesis that the truepartial regression coefficient is equal to zero (bi = 0), the probability of obtaining the estimatedregression coefficient in Table 1 by sheer chance is less than 5%, a small probability. Hence,the null hypothesis that bi = 0 is rejected. However, as noted by McCloskey and Ziliak (1996), anestimated regression coefficient may be statistically significant, but economically (or numerically)insignificant. McCloskey and Ziliak argue that it is more meaningful to report the economicsignificance of a statistically significant regression coefficient in terms of its total numericalimpact on the dependent variable.

The empirical results in Table 1, Column 2 show that the three statistically significant parochialvariables, HARVARDFACJPE, CHICAGOFACJPE and CHICAGOPHDJPE, are also numeri-cally significant. Their coefficients indicate that, ceteris paribus, articles by authors with theseparochial connections who publish in the JPE receive between 35 and 156 more citations thanarticles authored by those without such connections. To put these numbers in context, Laband(1986) reported that 85% of all published economics articles are cited fewer than 10 times. Only3% of all articles are cited more than 30 times and only. Three percent receive more than 100citations. These numerical results strongly suggest that authors with parochial connections toeither the JPE or the QJE do not publish articles of lesser quality.

It is possible that the previous result may be because an article published in a highly rankedjournal transmits a false signal about the quality of an article. Publication in a highly selectivejournal like the JPE or the QJE may, initially, serve as an unreliable indicator about the quality ofan article. The barometer of the scientific worth of an article is whether its quality is sustained overtime. This suggests that there is a time dimension to an article’s citations if parochialism exists

7 The total sample was broken up into the QJE and the JPE observations. A test of the null hypothesis of equalitybetween the coefficients from the QJE sample and from the JPE sample could not be rejected.


Table 2Tobit estimation results

Independent variables Dependent variable

Number of citations (1991–1995) Number of citations (1996–2000)

CONSTANT −2.3907 (.06) −44.7529 (.72)AUTHORCITES, 70–89 .0026 (1.31)a .0053 (1.49)a

PAGES .7025 (1.63)a 1.2967 (1.61)a

HARVARDFACQJE 8.8726 (.69) 7.9953 (.38)HARVARDPHDQJE −6.9919 (.64) −5.2027 (.29)CHICAGOFACQJE 16.3673 (.62) 20.7067 (.48)CHICAGOPHDQJE −1.4467 (.12) 2.8593 (.14)HARVARDFACJPE 43.6638 (3.20)b 50.3851 (2.25)c

HARVARDPHDJPE −7.4544 (.70) −5.1619 (.29)CHICAGOFACJPE 58.2473 (4.57)b 98.2869 (4.71)b

CHICAGOPHDJPE 16.5197 (2.01)c 20.4723 (1.51)JOURNALQUALITY .0046 (.01) .4678 (.61)COAUTHOR 3.6012 (.67) 2.9705 (.34)Log likelihood −1189.12 −1188.72

Absolute value of t-statistics in parentheses.a Significant at the .10 level.b Significant at the .01 level.c Significant at the .05 level.

at the home journal. If parochialism is present then, as members of the economics professionaccurately assess an article’s quality, the initial positive impact of parochialism on an article’scitations should diminish over time. If parochialism is not present, the initial positive impact ofparochial connections on an article’s citations should remain constant over time.

In order to determine whether the impact of parochialism on an article’s ensuing citationsdecreases over time, the dependent variable used in the previous estimation, the total number ofcitations received between 1991 and 2000, is disaggregated into two separate dependent variables:(i) the total number of citations received between 1991 and 1995 and (ii) the total number ofcitations received between1996 and 2000. The model used in the previous estimation (Table 1,Column 2) was then re-estimated with each dependent variable. The empirical results appear inTable 2, Columns 1 and 2, respectively.

Of the eight parochial variables only two, Harvard faculty and Chicago faculty who publishin the JPE, are significantly positive in both time periods. The null hypothesis of equality ofcoefficients for Harvard faculty who publish in the JPE between the two time intervals cannot berejected (i.e., the quality differential is constant over time), but was rejected for Chicago facultywho publish in the JPE (i.e., the quality differential increases over time).

The quality of articles for those with parochial connections to the JPE or the QJE is notsignificantly lower than those without such connections over time. In fact, the quality of articles byHarvard faculty and Chicago faculty who publish in the JPE is statistically and numerically higherthan those without such connections and this quality differential does not diminish over time.

4. Conclusion

Critics of the single-blind publication review process allege that certain journals associated witha particular “school of thought” do not evaluate research papers objectively. Two such journals


are the Quarterly Journal of Economics affiliated with Harvard University and the Journal ofPolitical Economy affiliated with the University of Chicago. It has been argued that these twojournals have parochial loyalties to their faculty members and doctorates which influences theirpublication criteria.

Detailed information was collected from the 61 articles published in the JPE and the 38articles published in the QJE in 1990. If parochialism is present at the JPE and at the QJE,one would expect to find articles by authors with parochial connections receiving preferentialtreatment disproportionate to the merits of the research after the article has been accepted forpublication.

The empirical results find that articles by Harvard faculty and their doctorates are not lesslikely to be selected as lead articles in the JPE and articles by Chicago faculty and their doctoratesare not more likely to be selected as lead articles in the JPE. Similarly, articles by Harvardfaculty and their doctorates are not more likely to be selected as lead articles in the QJE andChicago faculty and their doctorates are not less likely to have their articles selected as leadarticles in the QJE. In fact, the empirical results find the Chicago faculty who publish in theJPE are significantly less likely to have their articles selected as lead articles, while Chicagodoctorates who publish in the QJE are significantly more likely to have their articles in the leadposition.

Using as a measure of an article’s quality the number of subsequent citations it receives,the empirical results also find that articles by authors with parochial connections to the homejournal do not publish articles of lesser quality. In fact, Chicago faculty, Chicago doctorates,and Harvard faculty who publish in the JPE have statistically and numerically more cita-tions than authors without such parochial connections. In addition, this quality differential byHarvard faculty and Chicago faculty who publish in the JPE does not diminish over time.The empirical results do not support the contention that authors with parochial connectionsto the JPE or the QJE receive preferential treatment once their article has been accepted forpublication.

References

American Economic Review, 1992. A plea for a pluralistic and rigorous economics. 82, xxv.Blank, R.M., 1991. The effects of double-blind versus single-blind reviewing: evidence from the American Economic

Review. American Economic Review 81, 1041–1067.Graves, P.E., Marchand, J.R., Thompson, R., 1982. Economic departmental rankings: research incentives, constraints,

and efficiency. American Economic Review 72, 1131–1141.Klamer, A., 1984. Conversations With Economists: New Classical Economists and Opponents Speak Out on the Current

Controversy in Macroeconomics. Rowman and Allanheld, New Jersey.Laband, D.N., 1986. Article popularity. Economic Inquiry 24, 173–180.Laband, D.N., Piette, M.J., 1994a. Does the “blindness” of peer review influence manuscript selection efficiency? Southern

Economic Journal 60, 896–906.Laband, D.N., Piette, M.J., 1994b. Favoritism versus search for good papers: empirical evidence regarding the behavior

of journal. Journal of Political Economy 102, 194–203.Laband, D.N., Piette, M.J., 1994c. The relative impacts of economic journals: 1970–90. Journal of Economic Literature

32, 640–666.Leibowitz, S.J., Palmer, J.P., 1988. Assessing assessments of the relative quality of economics departments. Quarterly

Review of Economics and Business 28, 77–88.McCloskey, D.N., Ziliak, S.T., 1996. The standard error of regressions. Journal of Economic Literature 34,

97–114.McDowell, J.M., Melvin, M., 1983. The determinants of coauthorship: an analysis of the economics literature. Review

of Economics and Statistics 65, 155–160.


Medoff, M.H., 2003. Editorial favoritism in economics? Southern Economic Journal 70, 425–434.Shepherd, G.B., 1995. Rejected: Leading Economists Ponder The Publication Process. Thomas Horton,

Arizona.Yotopoulous, P.A., 1961. Institutional affiliation of the contributors in three professional journals. American Economic

Review 51, 665–670.

an analysis of parochialism at the jpe and qje

Documents