Half a century of empirical economics: a bibliometric retrospective

Empirical Economics celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2026. Motivated by this event, this paper provides a detailed bibliometric study of the journal between 1976 and 2025. Through publication and citation patterns, keyword co-occurrence networks, thematic maps, bibliographic coupling, and co-citation analysis, the article explores the intellectual development, methodological focus, and global research collaboration patterns of the journal. The results show an increase in publication activity, especially since the mid-2000s, accompanied by a significant growth in citation impact. Thematic analysis shows the existence of core themes such as economic growth, monetary policy, income inequality, business cycles, and forecasting, as well as new themes such as climate change, COVID-19, innovation, and machine learning. The rising importance of more advanced econometric approaches such as panel data models, cointegration analysis, and structural break analysis indicates the increasing methodological sophistication and integration with data science approaches. Bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis shows the dominant role of core econometric publications in the journal’s intellectual structure, while institutional and country-level analysis shows strong global collaboration patterns, with leading contributions from the USA, UK, Germany, Australia, and increasing collaboration from emerging economies. In summary, the results of this paper show that Empirical Economics has developed into a globally networked, methodologically sophisticated, and policy-engaged journal that connects economic theory and empirical research. This paper helps to understand the development path of empirical economic research and provides directions for future research.