Do Topics Diffuse from Core to Periphery Journals?

Abstract

We examine the interests among competing topics of macroeconomics by tracing publication frequencies of these topics as recorded in the EconLit database over the period from 1969 through 1996. We find some evidence in the data that the interests on a topic in the core journals relative to the periphery journals decreases as the topic gets old. We, however, find that an increasing interest on a topic in the periphery journals Granger causes an increase in interest on the same topic in the core journals but not vice versa. The evidence, therefore, suggests that the topics do not gradually diffuse from the core journals to the periphery journals. Nevertheless, we find that one could economize their literature search by focusing on that smaller set of core journals.