References across the fence: measuring the dialogue between economists and geographers

In this article, we try to measure the dialogue between economists and geographers. It has been argued that this dialogue can be best described as one of 'mutual neglect' but quantitative evidence is scarce. Our main data set covers all references from the first decade of the Journal of Economic Geography. Based on our results, the 'mutual neglect' obervation should be qualified. First, and correcting for the fact that geographers generally cite more than economists, geographers significantly cross-reference more to the neighboring field of economics than vice versa. Second, and perhaps most importantly, although the description of a non-debate might still hold in general, it clearly does so to a lesser extent when looking at the cross-references of geographers and economists in our data set.