Mankiw: Why are co-authors so important?

Following up on my previous post, Greg Mankiw also had some interesting advice on the importance of co-authors in economics in his American Economist article (PDF).

Why are co-authors so important for the way I work? One reason is found in Adam Smith's famous story of the pin factory. Smith observed that the pin factory was so productive because it allowed workers to specialize. Research is no different--it is just another form of production. Doing research takes various skills: identifying questions, developing models, providing theorems, finding data, expositing results. Because few economists excel at all these tasks, collaborating authors can together do things that each author could not do as easily on his own. In manufacturing knowledge, as in manufacturing pins, specialization raises productivity. (The puzzle is why Adam Smith chose to ignore his own analysis and write The Wealth of Nations without the benefit of a co-author.)

The second reason I work with co-authors is that it makes my job less solitary. Research and writing can be a lonely activity. It is easy to spend endless hours with a pad and pencil or in front of a computer without human contact. Some people may like that kind of work, but not me. Arguing with my co-authors makes my day more fun.

The third reason I work with co-authors is the most important: a good co-author improves you forever. In the most successful collaborations, both co-authors learn from the experience. A co-author can help you expand your knowledge, improve your skills, and expose your biases. Even after the collaboration is over, you take these benefits with you to future projects. To a large extent, as I have grown older, my co-authors have become my mentors.

What do other academics think? Comments welcome.

Comments

[Gavin Kennedy]

"The puzzle is why Adam Smith chose to ignore his own analysis and write The Wealth of Nations without the benefit of a co-author.)"

Research is slightly different from writing a report of a 12 year inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. In academic research you are usually working on original data to add to the knowledge base. Here a division of labour between the authors has the advantages you identified.

Smith was working with many 'co-authors' through his use of their earlier works in the forms of the books and pamphlets they wrote and published. Each provided a piece of knowledge that Smith used to mine the knowledge base for the data he needed to develop his own work.

Wealth of Nations contains the work of many scores of other authors. Smith did not invent, discover or create the works he used to arrive at his own conclusions. No work of such a scale is the undivided labour of one author.

In a research project, which by design are narrow, limited and non-enclydopedic, the small team of authors, each a specialist in a part if not the whole, there is an active division of labour; in Wealth of Nations the division of labour is passive (many of the authors Smith drew upon were dead, including the hundreds of references to the writings of classical Rome and Greece).A research team too, uses the labours of passive particpants - its mandatory literature review, for example.

Hence there is no 'puzzle' about Smith and his lone authorship. Indeed, some (Schumpeter, Rothbard and Rashid) accuse Smith of plagiarism, an unfair and misleading accusation in my view.