<p>I read Hamermesh's 2012 paper, "Six Decades of Top Economics Publishing: Who and How?". He collected the data from QJE, AER and JPE. It seems that the average age of economists is now higher than it was 20 or even 10 years ago. However, I wonder if things might be different in second tier journals. Maybe now young economists tend to submit their paper to these journals?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-03-04T00:01:45.297Z
I think the average age of everybody is higher than it was 20 years ago :)
Lumi
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-03-04T16:35:06.320Z
One plausible explanation for this would be that as the frontier of economics moves outwards, the amount of time it takes young economists to get to that frontier increases. I don't think it's necessarily the case that young economists tend to submit to lower-tier journals. Anecdotally, the journals at which a given economist publishes seems to me to be pretty homogeneous across time. That's why, supposing your observation is true, I favor the explanation of the frontier being more technical and sophisticated than ever, and thus it taking a while longer to get to it.
Shane
<history>
Is the average age of economists getting higher than it was many years ago?
bobsz
# Is the average age of economists getting higher than it was many years ago?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-03-03)

I read Hamermesh's 2012 paper, "Six Decades of Top Economics Publishing: Who and How?". He collected the data from QJE, AER and JPE. It seems that the average age of economists is now higher than it was 20 or even 10 years ago. However, I wonder if things might be different in second tier journals. Maybe now young economists tend to submit their paper to these journals?

**Tags:** history

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: I think the average age of everybody is higher than it was 20 years ago :)  
> **username_2**: One plausible explanation for this would be that as the frontier of economics moves outwards, the amount of time it takes young economists to get to that frontier increases. I don't think it's necessarily the case that young economists tend to submit to lower-tier journals. Anecdotally, the journals at which a given economist publishes seems to me to be pretty homogeneous across time. That's why, supposing your observation is true, I favor the explanation of the frontier being more technical and sophisticated than ever, and thus it taking a while longer to get to it.  

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## 0 answers

