Do editors favor their students' work? A test of undue favoritism in top economics journals

This paper asks whether students with top journal editors as dissertation advisors observe statistical advantages in publishing over students without top journal editors as dissertation advisors. We analyze early-career publication histories of nearly 2,000 graduates from top 30 economics programs in the early 1990s. We find that students who work with QJE editors average significantly higher values over four common measures of general research productivity than otherwise similar students and that students of QJE editors average significantly more AER and QJE publications. We further find that both students of ReStat editors and students of Econometrica editors average statistically more ReStat articles. Our results appear to reject the argument that top journal editors exhibit undue favoritism in the publication process with regards to their former students.