Jack of fewer trades: Evolution of specialization in research

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

It is widely maintained that scientists have become increasingly specialized with a narrow range of expertise ever since the era of “Renaissance men.” However, evidence on scientists' specialization is rather anecdotal. We provide large-scale evidence to address whether younger generations of inventors have indeed become more specialized, using a unique panel data set of Korean inventors. We also investigate how the degree of specialization evolves over an inventor's research career and how far an inventor switches his or her field of expertise in the technology space over a career.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)423-452
Number of pages30
JournalCanadian Journal of Economics
Volume56
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023 May

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We are indebted to Jaesung Choi for collecting the Korean patent citation data for us. We would like to thank participants at the 10th Asian Conference on Applied Microeconomics/Econometrics at the National University of Singapore, seminar participants at Hanyang University and the University of Hong Kong as well as the editor, Katherine Cuff, and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions. Kim was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2016S1A3A2923769). We alone are responsible for any errors.

Funding Information:
We are indebted to Jaesung Choi for collecting the Korean patent citation data for us. We would like to thank participants at the 10th Asian Conference on Applied Microeconomics/Econometrics at the National University of Singapore, seminar participants at Hanyang University and the University of Hong Kong as well as the editor, Katherine Cuff, and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions. Kim was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF‐2016S1A3A2923769). We alone are responsible for any errors.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Canadian Economics Association.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Economics and Econometrics

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