The Perils of Preaching To the Choir?

Laband and Tollison (2000) warn that specialized Austrian journals encourage excessive within-group communication at the expense of exchanges of ideas with the broader economics profession. I evaluate this possibility using publications by authors of papers in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics (QJAE) and the Review of Austrian Economics (RAE). QJAE and RAE authors displayed no tendency to publish more frequently in these journals over the decade 2000-2009, either in absolute terms or as a proportion of their total economics journal publications. The most frequent publishers in the Austrian journals successfully published in mainstream journals, including Public Choice and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Papers by top publishers in the QJAE and RAE are cited less often in the Social Sciences Citation Index than these authors' papers in other journals, but a handful of papers drive the citation averages. Overall I find little evidence that Austrian economists merely preach to the choir.

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