The production of published research by U.S. academic health economists

This paper investigates the research productivity of U.S. health economists, both in the past five years and over their careers to date. We examine quantity of overall publications, as well as quantity within categories of journals. We study unique data from a 2005 survey of U.S. health economists who were members of the International Health Economics Association or the Health Economics Interest Group of AcademyHealth. Basic descriptives indicate that senior health economists have considerably greater five-year research productivity than less senior researchers. Roughly a third of health economists employed in economics departments report that publishing in non-economics journals is "not recommended" for promotion and tenure. Regression models indicate that the factors associated with greater productivity include: more hours spent per week on research, experience, and type of academic unit. The findings reported here offer insight into the heterogeneity of health economists and contribute to our understanding of the productivity of academic economists more generally.