Abstract
Carlos
It has been over four years since Editor-in-Chief Emeritus Paul Grimes and I began working on a special economic education issue to celebrate his outstanding tenure at The American Economist (AEX) and announce my new role at the journal. Since then, I have had the opportunity to work with a remarkable editorial team, a supportive Omicron Delta Epsilon (ODE) Executive Board, skillful scholars, committed reviewers, and engaged readers. Without a doubt, I have grown professionally and personally during my time as Editor-in-Chief, and I know that the journal is in good hands with Dr. Diego Mendez-Carbajo at the helm. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Diego was a full professor of economics at Illinois Wesleyan University. We first crossed paths at an economic education conference in 2015 and, since then, we have worked together on a variety of projects. Dr. Mendez-Carbajo has served as Associate Editor of AEX under the leadership of two different editors-in-chief; he shares the goals and objectives of ODE, the International Honor Society in Economics, and, with the assistance of our editorial board, will take the journal to new heights.
In our “transition” editorial (Grimes & Asarta, 2021), I noted that one of my goals was to bring additional visibility and scholarly recognition to the journal. With that in mind, over the past four years our editorial team has continued to work with distinguished economists to publish their works (e.g., List, 2024; Romer, 2022). Our team has also published several highly cited articles (e.g., Geerling et al., 2023; Wagner & Walstad, 2023), bringing additional visibility to the AEX. Furthermore, we developed a new feature, titled Learning from a Laureate (Swinton, 2022), where we highlight the experiences of those who learned from the greatest minds in our field, bringing the academic study of economics closer to students. Finally, the journal became the home of the latest National Quinquennial Survey on Teaching and Assessment Methods in Economics (Asarta et al., 2021; Harter & Asarta, 2022), a tool that has tracked the evolution of how we teach economics in the United States since 1995. These and many other contributions have propelled our impact factors, with our Scopus CiteScore increasing from .8 in 2021 to 2.7 as of September of 2024. Similarly, our Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) increased from .189 in 2021 to .470 in 2023. These remarkable improvements in rankings are already generating increased attention from potential authors and our academic community at large, with the number of manuscripts submitted to the AEX increasing significantly in 2024.
As I noted back in 2021, given AEX’s tradition of publishing economic education scholarship (Asarta et al., 2017), and my own background in that field, I expected the journal to receive an increased volume of submissions aimed at improving teaching and assessment methods in economics. Indeed, the journal has seen that increase and has published numerous economic education articles over the past four years, including five articles focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in the classroom as part of a special issue dedicated to the memory of our dear friend and colleague, Sharmila Vishwasrao (Asarta, 2023). To manage the increased volume of economic education submissions, we welcomed Dr. Laura Ahlstrom to our editorial board in 2022. Laura, along with several other editors, will continue to provide guidance and support to authors interested in publishing their economic education work in AEX. And, speaking of economic education work, this issue includes a unique symposium focused on ancillaries of undergraduate economics programs. The symposium grew out of earlier collaborative work between Gail Hoyt (University of Kentucky) and Roisin O'Sullivan (Smith College), who conducted a survey of ancillary elements of economic undergraduate programs at U.S. institutions. Hoyt and O’Sullivan presented their key findings in a session at the 2023 ASSA meetings and later organized a follow-up session at the 2024 ASSA meetings. The papers presented during that follow-up session were carefully reviewed and later curated by AEX Guest Editors Irene Foster (The George Washington University), Gail Hoyt, and Roisin O’Sullivan. In addition to the symposium, and to celebrate the editor-in-chief transition, we are also releasing the results of an inaugural national survey on teaching methods in Advanced Placement (AP) economics courses. We sincerely hope that you will enjoy reading these and the other articles included in this issue.
It has been an honor and a privilege to serve first as your Associate Editor and later as your Editor-in-Chief. I would like to thank Paul Grimes and the ODE Executive Board for their trust and support, and wish the absolute best to Diego Mendez-Carbajo and the rest of the members of the editorial board. Onward!
Diego
I am truly grateful for the opportunity extended to me by Omicron Delta Epsilon (ODE) to become the next Editor-in-Chief of The American Economist (AEX).
I first became familiar with the journal when serving as the faculty adviser to the Illinois Phi chapter of the international honor society in economics. As an official publication of ODE, the journal was regularly showcased during the initiation ceremonies of new members. The association between ODE and AEX was always brought up whenever my undergraduate students referenced scholarship from AEX in their academic honors projects. The fact that the journal publishes original research from all fields and schools of economic thought makes it a very rich source of peer-reviewed original ideas.
When Paul Grimes invited me to become an associate editor, I was very excited at the opportunity to work along fellow academics in advancing the state of economic analysis, education, and communication. When Paul stepped down and Carlos Asarta became the Editor-in-Chief, I gained more insight into the academic publication process by attending the editors’ breakfast at the annual meetings of the American Economic Association – Allied Social Science Association. Carlos has been very generous with his time, sharing his wealth of experience as a prolific scholar and diligent manager.
As part of the editorial team, I have had a privileged perspective into how original ideas come together and scholars work to advance their individual fields. Those scholarly fields keep on evolving and the “empirical turn” identified by Hamermesh more than a decade ago is clearly visible in the character of the manuscripts now arriving at AEX. The tools of econometric analysis have become more complex, and the intended contributions of that work have become narrower. Thus, both the editorial skills needed to evaluate manuscripts and the general data literacy skills needed to understand published articles are more sophisticated today than a decade ago.
I believe the most exciting way forward for the discipline of economics stems from our privileged position at the intersection between statistics and the systematic analysis of social issues. Those colleges and universities capable of doing so are already reclassifying their general economics programs to econometrics and quantitative economics programs. Prominent professional economists are skilled users of data and AEX will feature their applied contributions in those topics that match the inquisitive aims and broad scope of the journal.
Pursuing AEX mission “to contribute to the ongoing dialog and academic debates within the economics discipline” is the shared responsibility of a large group of people. The devoted past Editors have promoted well-respected scholarship and raised the profile of the journal. The enterprising Associate Editors diligently manage submissions and identify qualified reviewers for new manuscripts. The selfless reviewers donate their time and energy to assess and help improve the creative effort of dozens of authors. It is a professional honor to contribute to this endeavor as the new Editor-in-Chief of AEX.