infonet-economy

Research output in economics is commonly measured based on the reputation of the journals in which an author has published. Using data from the 2010 Handelsblatt ranking of economists in German speaking countries and citation data from the Web of Science, we examine the relationship between reputation and citation frequency at the level of individual researchers. We find that the variation (variance) in individual researcher citations explains only a small fraction of the scores based on traditional measures of reputation. Our findings suggest that individual citation data are indispensable for a relevant measurement of individual research output and for providing more productive incentives in academic research.