Viral economics: an epidemiological model of knowledge diffusion in economics
用流行病学SEIR模型模拟经济学知识的扩散，分析759个子领域的论文发表数据，发现部分子领域内生增长更快，过半子领域需新学者补充才能维持。
We model the diffusion of economic knowledge using an epidemiological model of susceptible, exposed, infected/inspired, and recovered populations (SEIR). Treating peer-reviewed journal publications as evidence of a scholar’s infection/inspiration with energy for an idea or theme, we estimate the coefficients of a four-equation simultaneous system for each of 759 sub-fields of economics. Results show that some sub-fields of economics (or viruses, here) grow endogenously much faster than others, and just over half have basic reproduction properties sufficient to ensure survival without the annual addition of new protégé scholars.