A Text-Mining and Bibliographic Analysis of the Economic Development Literature: 1959–2020

Abstract

In this paper, I conducted a systematic review of the economic development literature from 1959 to 2020 to reveal the ebbs and flows of major research topics, combining the text mining technique with the bibliographic analysis. Topics such as “regional development” and “sustainable development” have gained importance over the decades, while “development strategy” has lost its prominent status. New topics such as “climate change” and “developing countries” have emerged in recent years. An analysis of the citation network reveals three distinctive research trajectories: One engages with the concepts of the creative class, human capital, clusters, and art and culture. Another centers around the topic of “regional development”, and a third, smaller group studies “new industrial district”. This study helps researchers understand the evolution of the roadmap in the field of economic development, properly situate their own work in the literature, identify influential citations, and discover novel research topics in need of further exploration.