Race‐related research in economics

Abstract Issues of racial justice and economic inequalities between racial and ethnic groups have risen to the top of public debate. Economists' ability to contribute to these debates is based on the body of race‐related research. We study the volume and content of race‐related research in economics. We base our analysis on a corpus of 225,000 economics publications from 1960 to 2020, to which we apply an algorithmic approach to classify race‐related work. Since 1960, less than 2% of economics publications have been race‐related. On content, while over 50% of race‐related publications in the 1970s focused on Black individuals, by the 2010s this had fallen to 20%. There has been a steady decline in the share of race‐related research on discrimination since the 1980s, with a rise in the share of studies on identity. Finally, we apply our algorithm to NBER and CEPR working papers posted over the last four decades, to study an earlier stage of the research process. We document a concentration of race‐related research into a few fields, and its continued absence from many others. We discuss implications of our findings for economists' ability to contribute to debates on race and ethnicity in the economy.