Do you know your Eigenfactor Score on SSRN?

The author-level Eigenfactor® score is a weighted measure of an author’s citations. It takes into account the number of authors of the paper, the number of outgoing citations from each paper citing an author’s paper, and the importance of the citing paper. All self-citations are eliminated before the score is calculated in order to remove bias, and the final score reported in the SSRN ranking tables is calculated from SSRN citation data only.

 

 To understand how this importance-weighting works, consider the following iterated voting procedure:
“Each author begins with a single vote and passes it on, dividing the vote proportionally based on those authors whom she cites. In other words, if she cites two authors – author A one time and author B two times – she would distribute 1/3 of her vote to author A and 2/3 of her vote to author B. After one round of this procedure, some authors will receive more votes than others. In the second round, each author passes on her current vote total, as received in the previous round, again dividing this quantity equally among those authors whom she cites. This process is iterated indefinitely. Eventually, we reach a steady state in which each author receives an unchanging number of votes in each round. An author’s Eigenfactor score is the percentage of the total votes that she receives at this steady state.”

 

 To understand more about these metrics, read this article:

•  West, Jevin D., Michael C. Jensen, Ralph J. Dandrea, Gregory J. Gordon, et Carl T. Bergstrom. « Author-Level Eigenfactor Metrics: Evaluating the Influence of Authors, Institutions, and Countries within the Social Science Research Network Community ». Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 64, n^o 4 (1 avril 2013): 787‑801.

 

 How can I access my own personal score?

 Go to the “Top authors” section on SSRN and simply type your surname (here : Alemanno). As you can see, Alberto Alemanno ranks 111 within the top 30,000 authors on SSRN and his Eigenfactor Score (x100) is 0,0989 (ranks 9,062 out of 30 000).

 

 

 

Need further assistance?
Ask the Library!
 

Also, HEC Paris has moved into the top 10 rankings in the SSRN Top 1,000 International Business School, as of June 2014.
This is an outstanding achievement relating to our research publications, and will continue to raise the profile of HEC Paris worldwide.

Keep up the good work!

  

‘Capital in the twenty-first century’ sparking a debate

French economist Thomas Pikkety’s recent book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been the subject of large scale debate.

His book studies the global dynamics of income and wealth distribution since 18c in 20+ countries, including particular case studies of the UK, USA and France. Alongside other economists, Pikkety studies historical data collected over the past 15 years, together with Atkinson, Saez, Postel-Vinay, Rosenthal, Alvaredo, Zucman, and over thirty others.
Some of the main ideas presented in this book are that inequality is in fact a feature of capitalism, that can only be reversed through state intervention. He suggests that the history of income and wealth inequality is always political, chaotic and unpredictable; it involves national identities and sharp reversals and therefore that nobody can predict the reversals of the future. He argues that the trend towards greater inequality was reduced through major historical events such as world wars, which forced governments to intervene with the redistribution of wealth. He speaks of a shift back to ‘patrimonial capitalism’ of inherited wealth and predicts low economic growth in the near future, despite technological advancement, and proposes a new wealth tax rate in order to combat this.

This book has been both praised and criticised by the academic community.

For example, nobel –prize winning economist Paul Krugman called the book a “magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality” and “the most important economics book of the year — and maybe of the decade.”
Steven Pearlstein called it a “triumph of economic history over the theoretical, mathematical modeling that has come to dominate the economics profession in recent years.”

However, a large chunk of criticism comes from Pikkety placing inequality at the center of analysis without any reflection on why it matters or explaining its implications. Martin Wolf, suggest he merely assumes that inequality matters, but never explains why, only demonstrates that it exists and how it worsens. Clive Crook also underlines how, “Aside from its other flaws, ‘Capital in the 21st Century’ invites readers to believe not just that inequality is important but that nothing else matters. This book wants you to worry about low growth in the coming decades not because that would mean a slower rise in living standards, but because it might … worsen inequality.”

There has also been heavy criticisms of Pikkety’s methodology. Lawrence Summers claims her underestimated diminishing returns on capital, which would change the upper limits of inequality following his model. James K. Galbraith criticizes Piketty for using “an empirical measure that is unrelated to productive physical capital and whose dollar value depends, in part, on the return on capital. Where does the rate of return come from? Piketty never says,” and German economist Stefan Homburg (de) criticizes Piketty for equating “wealth” with “capital”.

A lot of focus has been put on not only lexical differences, but a focus on qualitative and quantitative methods. Inequality itself can hold both qualitative and quantitative connotations, as it does not solely rely on numerical wealth. With this being such a central factor, it needs to be strictly defined.
There are also claims that the acquisition of quantitative data from a variety of sources, and from the array of researchers required to obtain necessary figures across the studied period, were also mixed in a questionable manner, which would impact on results exiting the economic model.

A further list of reviews and criticisms can be found here

So whilst Pikkety’s book was groundbreaking, it does not come without controversy

Make up your own mind – you can find this book at the library, with the code 2-2434 PIK

The World Cup in the academic sphere

As most of you will be aware, the FIFA 2014 World Cup has begun in Brazil.
We thought it would be interesting to look at how the impact of major sporting events has been studied in the academic sphere, and found a few articles linking this major sporting event with the business world.

Here are a few articles we selected after performing a search using the multi-source searcher

–Business lessons from the soccer World Cup
By Pascual Berrone (2011)

Based on Spain’s achievement as soccer World Cup winner, the purpose of this paper is to draw lessons for business leaders.

Spain is experiencing for first time in its history the enjoyment of being the best soccer squad in the world. After the initial excitement of the soccer World Cup, it is useful to reflect on what are the elements that help explaining the championship of the Spanish team.

 

–Sports Sentiment and Stock Returns
by Alex Edmans, Diego GarcÍa and Øyvind Norli

This paper investigates the stock market reaction to sudden changes in investor mood. Using psychological evidence of a strong link between soccer outcomes and mood, the authors use international soccer results as a primary mood variable. They found a significant market decline after soccer losses. For example, a loss in the World Cup elimination stage leads to a next-day abnormal stock return of −49 basis points.

 

–Is Football an Indicator of Development at the International Level?
By Gásquez, Roberto; Royuela, Vicente.

The aim of this paper is to examine whether football can be considered an indicator of development at the international level. An empirical econometric model is designed in order to analyse development in terms of GDP per capita as well as in terms of the Human Development Index. Cross-sectional and time-series information are used. The results suggest that FIFA rankings of national teams can be used to complement our understanding of multidimensional development, in particular, in those countries where the availability of information is not as good as researchers would like.

 

–The performance of football club managers: skill or luck?
By Adrian Bell, Chris Brooks & Tom Markham

This paper develops a performance management tool and considers its application to the football industry. Specifically, the resulting model evaluates the extent to which the performance of English Premier League football club managers can be attributed to skill or luck when measured separately from the characteristics of the team.

 

–Let’s Get Messi? Top-Scorer Productivity in the European Champions League.
By Tim R. L. Fry,  Guillaume Galanos & Alberto Posso.

Getting a player like Lionel Messi in the squad would seem like a dream come true for a professional football manager, but is it always best to have top-quality players? We study the determinants of top goal-scorers’ productivity in the UEFA Champions League.

 

– Ode to a “million dollar” question: does the future of football lie in the Middle East?
By  Nnamdi O. Madichie, (2013)

This paper reflects on recent events in the global football landscape and their implications for the Middle East, especially in their ambitious aspiration to be the future destination of the sport.Even though the tiny Gulf state of Qatar has “controversially” won the hosting rights of the greatest football event in the world (i.e. FIFA 2022), the FIFA world ranking of the State puts it just within the top 100 global footballing nations (ranked no. 95 as at November 2011). Its sibling, the UAE, fares even worse. However both countries have made the most investments in the sport of football in recent years.

 

–Show Me the Money! Pay Structure and Individual Performance in Golden Teams.
By Edoardo Della Torre, Antonio Giangreco, Johan Maes,.

The authors analyse the unresolved relationship between pay structure and individual performance in organizational golden team settings, namely, groups of interdependent high-skilled, high-paid employees. They focus on individual (rather than collective) performance, considering both absolute and relative (within team-within role) pay structures, and investigating the moderating role of pay dispersion in the relationship between pay level and performance.

 

You can try the multi-source search engine for yourself here, find out more information about how it works from this post, or ask for research assistance at the library.