The Rise of Research Teams: Benefits and Costs in Economics
Economics research is increasingly a team activity: economists increasingly coauthor their papers, and these coauthored papers have a large and increasing impact advantage. This “rise of teams” raises issues for individual researchers and for the field. On the one hand, coauthorship brings benefits, allowing individuals to combine perspectives, knowledge, skills, and effort in fruitful ways. But it also imposes costs; for example, coauthorship divides and obscures credit among the participants, which can undermine individual career progression. This paper synthesizes recent literature to weigh the benefits and costs of research teams. The findings provide guidance to individual researchers themselves, and the institutions that support them, in fostering high-impact research and productive research careers.
