Research output: evidence from economics departments in the Asia-Pacific region

This study examines the research output of Asia-Pacific institutions in leading economics journals between 2000 and 2010. Growth has occurred and has been aided by links with institutions in the West. Top performing departments are more highly ranked by peers and located within institutions ranked higher in worldwide institutional rankings. Earlier research suggested that output distribution can be approximated by Zipf's law. We find that the top institutions produce more than predicted. This is suggested to be related to scale economies, as greater numbers of top performing staff generate significant externalities in output. This has implications for research funding in emerging countries in the region.