What Makes Econometric Ideas Popular: The Role of Connectivity

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This paper aims to identify the factors contributing to the diffusion of ideas in econometrics by paying particular attention to connectivity in content and social networks. Considering a sample of 17,260 research papers in econometrics over the 1980-2020 period, we rely on Structural Topic Models to extract and categorize topics relevant to key domains in the discipline. Using a hurdle count model, we show that both content and social connectivity among the authors (i.e., social connectivity) enhance the likelihood of non-zero citation counts and play a key role in shaping the diffusion of econometric ideas. We also find that high topic connectivity augmented by robust social connectivity among authors or authoring teams further enhances econometric ideas' diffusion success. Finally, our findings unveil an inverted U-shaped relationship between connectivity and the success of idea diffusion; the latter initially escalates but starts to wane upon reaching a certain threshold.