Co-authorship and the output of academic economists

This paper uses panel data on 339 economists to evaluate the relationship between co-authorship and output. It is shown that for a given individual, more co-authorship is associated with higher quality, greater length, and greater frequency of publications. However, the net relationship between co-authorship and output attributable to the individual is negative after discounting for the number of authors. The results of this paper suggest that universities and granting agencies which preferentially reward research collaboration may be undermining their goal of maximizing research output. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.