Why econ hasn't been flooded by AI slop: field norms push quality over quantity
Afinetheorem · x · 2026-09-29
An exchange on AI's impact on academic publishing: @Ingar30 argues economics is well positioned for the AI wave because its norms reward a few killer papers in top journals, so economists use AI to raise quality rather than volume. Afinetheorem agrees, adding the mechanism: many publish 1 paper a year and high output in low-ranked journals was already stigmatized pre-AI, so AI leads to quality upgrading instead of slop.
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