Where economists focus their research published by The Economist (12/2020)
“They don’t always look in the right places
An old joke: a policeman sees an inebriated man searching for his keys under a lamp post and offers to help find them. After a few fruitless minutes, the officer asks the man whether he’s certain he dropped his keys at that particular location. No, says the man, he lost them in the park. Then why search here, asks the officer. The man answers: “Because that’s where the light is.” For years, the story has been used to illustrate the simple point, of great relevance to social scientists, that what you find depends on where you look. And for much of its history, economics has examined a very narrow set of countries. An analysis by The Economist of more than 900,000 papers published in economics journals (see article), finds that as recently as 1990, roughly two-thirds of published papers focused on the rich English-speaking countries: America, Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand…”