Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Memorandum,
Oslo University, Department of Economics

No 08/2003: The Tale of two Research Communities: The Diffusion of Research on Productive Efficiency.

Finn R. Førsund () and Nikias Sarafoglou ()
Additional contact information
Finn R. Førsund: Dept. of Economics, University of Oslo, Postal: Department of Economics, University of Oslo, P.O Box 1095 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway
Nikias Sarafoglou: Department of Economics, Mid-Sweden University, Postal: Department of Economics, Mid-Sweden University, S-851 70 Sundsvall, Sweden, http://www.mh.se/english/

Abstract: The field of theoretical and applied efficiency analysis is pursued both by economists and people from operational research and management science. Each group tends to cite a different paper as the seminal one. Recent availability of electronically accessible databases of journal articles makes studies of the diffusion of papers through citations possible The conventional wisdom that the seminal paper within economics lay dormant for two decades, and that efficiency studies only got rolling after the operational research paper appeared, is shown to be wrong. Citation peaks have been found to be typically five to seven years, with a long tailing off. Both seminal papers followed quite different diffusion patterns. Research strands inspired by the seminal paper within economics are identified and followed by citation analysis. In recent years a weak trend toward convergence of the two camps into a common network for efficiency and productivity analyses is documented.

Keywords: Bibliometric methods; Farrell efficiency measures; DEA

JEL-codes: B21; D24

43 pages, April 9, 2003

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Published as
Finn R. Førsund and Nikias Sarafoglou, (2005), 'The Tale of two Research Communities: The Diffusion of Research on Productive Efficiency.', International Journal of Production Economics, vol 98, no 1, pages 17-40

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