Why Nobel-Winning Scientists are Getting Older:
priceonomics.com/why-nobel-winn… http://t.co/rNxCUS0xG2—
Priceonomics (@priceonomics) April 10, 2015
Nobel-Winning Scientists are Getting Older
05 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of education, human capital, industrial organisation, personnel economics Tags: death of the Renaissance man, Nobel prizes, rising burden of knowledge
Some economics of co-authorship
10 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of education, managerial economics, organisational economics, personnel economics Tags: polymaths, rising burden of knowledge
The bad explanation of the proliferation of co-authorship is academic rent seeking and CV padding. We do live in a world, publish or perish and academic productivity does decline quite markedly when tenure is secured.
The good explanation is more co-authors is an efficient response to the rising burden of knowledge where teams of authors need to get across much larger fields than in the past. In empirical economics, one co-author might specialise in the econometrics, while the other author tells them what to do.
Ben Jones in ‘The Burden of Knowledge and the Death of the Renaissance Man: Is Innovation Getting Harder? found that as knowledge accumulates as technology advances, successive generations of innovators may face an increasing educational burden.
Innovators can compensate through lengthening their time in education and narrowing expertise, but these responses come at the cost of reducing individual innovative capacities. This has implications for the organization of innovative activity – a greater reliance on teamwork – and has negative implications for economic growth.
HT: Stan Liebowitz via andrew gelman
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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