Citations of Most Often Cited Economists: Do Scholarly Books Matter More than Quality Journals?

This paper empirically investigates the determinants of citations based on the publication of the top 100 most often cited economists. The effects of publication age and author fame on subsequent citations are found to be positive and significant. Citations are also significantly affected by popular subfields in economics. However, journal quality measures, such as impact factors, download statistics and top-4 elite journals, have insignificant effects on citations. In contrast, the citation effect of scholarly books is positive and significant, and its impact is even greater than those of journal quality measures.