Are Financial Economists Creative?

• In Event: 148 - Regular Session. Economic Sociology. Creativity in Economic Life

Abstract

How does research in financial economics gain recognition and prestige? Drawing on a dataset of awards and printed research citation networks, I examine the importance of social structure alongside institutional dynamics to doing creative work in financial economics. I find that cohesive collaborations in the context of diverse research networks generate creative work that gets recognized in the field’s professional journals, but that life-time achievement awards responds to institutional dynamics only. I suggest that this paradox, deriving from the hybrid constituencies to which financial economics responds, may explain why financial economics seems unitary in spite of internal diversity.

Author

• Simone Polillo, University of Virginia