The Evolution of the American Economic Review (1911-2011) from a Technical and Theoretical Perspective

This paper seeks to examine the technical and theoretical orientation of the American Economic Review (AER) journal from 1911 until 2011. Arguably one of the most potent journals in economics, AER has been a pillar in the development of economics as a science through its focus on novel methodologies and models based on economic intuition. Also important is the trends in the publication of the sector-based, disciplinary and issue-based articles that have been published by the journal. Using a typology of taxonomies and trajectories, we analyze in this paper the direction of economic research over the last hundred years using the Economic Historical Analysis Approach (EHA-Approach)