RESEARCH NOTE: Citation Bias and the Economics of Race and Crime Literature

Abstract

This research note investigates citation bias using probabilities of zero citations, total citations, and citations per year since publication from Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar for all 759 articles on the economics of race and crime as extracted from EconLit for the period 1970–2020 and reported in previous work by Mason et al. Our citation analysis considers two main variables of interest: (a) whether the article was published in the Review of Black Political Economy and (b) whether one or more of an article's authors were Black. We report the results of linear probability models of zero citations and negative binomial models of total citations and citations per year since publication. We also estimate the average marginal effects for publication in the Review of Black Political Economy and Black-authored articles on racism or racial discrimination findings. The results of this research note validate and reconfirm the findings of Mason et al. We find evidence of systematically lower citations of articles published in the Review of Black Political Economy. In addition, we find that articles with Black authors are more likely to include findings of discrimination or racism. Articles published in the Review are also more likely to find racial discrimination, but these journal effects are not always statistically significant at the 5% level. These findings are consistent across citation engines, model specifications, and estimation techniques.