Certainty equivalent citation: a generalized class of citation indexes

Abatemarco, Antonio and Dell'Anno, Roberto (2011): Certainty equivalent citation: a generalized class of citation indexes.

Abstract

Citation indexes have attracted the interest of many researchers in the recent years. In this paper we propose a new class of citation indexes which is shown to generalize most of the citation indexes in the existing literature (h-, g-, f-, t-index). The class of indexes is obtained borrowing from the notion of ``certainty equivalent income'' or ``equally distributed equivalent income'' which has been largely implemented in the field of risk and inequality measurement. As a result citation orderings are shown to depend on a parameter of concentration/dispersion aversion capturing the value judgments of the decision-maker with respect to the distribution of citations. In order to verify the sensitivity of scientific productivity orderings with respect to concentration/dispersion aversion, an empirical application to a representative sample of Italian academic economists is presented.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: citation index; h-index; research assessment; scientific impact measures
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D6 - Welfare Economics > D63 - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement; A - General Economics and Teaching > A2 - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics > A29 - Other; H - Public Economics > H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies > H52 - Government Expenditures and Education

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