European Economists Divorce Elsevier | March 21, 2003 | Chronicle of Higher Education

ab1630's bookmarks 2018-08-05

Summary:

"MAKING ECONOMIES: The European Economic Association is just 18 years old, but as the continent has moved toward political union and a single currency, the young group has accumulated a great deal of clout. "You have to realize that within Europe, each country had their own economics journals, their own economic associations," says Patrick Bolton, an economics professor at Princeton University. "And they've been completely sidelined by the European association."

Back in 1986, the nascent organization feared that it would be too difficult to start a new journal from scratch. So its leaders arranged to adopt the European Economic Review, which had been published by Elsevier Science since 1969, as the association's official journal. Over time, however, the group grew unhappy with Elsevier's prices (the journal cost libraries $950 annually) and contractual requirements (the journal's editors were technically hired not by the association but by Elsevier).

Two years ago, the association filed for divorce. "We felt that there was no room for maneuver in terms of getting reasonable prices for libraries," says the association's president, Torsten Persson, a professor of economics at Stockholm University. "And we didn't own our own journal, which is very odd for a reasonably successful organization not to do. We wanted to make a clean break."

They did. The new Journal of the European Economic Association (price to libraries: $325 per year), published by MIT Press, will make its first appearance this month. The debut issue will include articles on fertility patterns (are they driven primarily by economic self-interest or by social norms?), the effects of the British minimum-wage law of 1999, and the costs and benefits of making decisions by simple majority rule, as opposed to seeking unanimity....

When the noncompete clauses in their Elsevier contracts expire (during the next year), two former editors of the European Economic Review will migrate to the new journal. Xavier Vives, a professor of economics and finance at the Insead business school, in France, will join the fold on July 1; Jordi Gali, director of the Center for International Economic Research, in Barcelona, will join on January 1. Other editors, already in place, are Mr. Bolton; Alan B. Krueger, another economics professor at Princeton; and Roberto Perotti, a professor of economics at the European University Institute, near Florence....

Elsevier will continue to publish the European Economic Review, which no longer has any relationship with the association. Its managing editor, Gerard A. Pfann, a professor of econometrics and organizational science at the University of Maastricht, says in an e- mail message that the journal "will continue its role as the leading academic outlet for European economists." (Elsevier declined to comment for this article. In a news release last December, the company said that it had tried to reach a compromise with the association, including on matters of price. The statement also emphasized that Elsevier provided the association with more than $500,000 in profit sharing and other subsidies during their 16-year alliance.)..."

Link:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/European-Economists-Divorce/7628

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oa.declarations_of_independence oa.gold oa.milestones oa.publishers oa.publishing oa.economics oa.prices oa.business_models oa.societies oa.elsevier oa.mit_press oa.up oa.paywalled oa.europe oa.journals oa.ssh

Date tagged:

08/05/2018, 08:09

Date published:

08/05/2018, 04:21