Co-worker network: How closely are researchers who published in the top five economics journals related?

This paper aims to analyze the academic backgrounds of 3587 researchers who published in the top five economics journals in the last 10 years. We find that the researchers come from relatively diverse backgrounds at the undergraduate level, but their PhD degree-granting institutions are more concentrated. Most researchers work in a few prestigious institutions after their graduation. Therefore, co-worker relations among researchers are quite common. Many co-authors who are unrelated at the time of publication were co-workers in the past. Co-worker networks are found to be much denser than co-author networks.