Albania as an object and a context of research in economic sciences: bibliometric analysis

• Published in: Ekonomia i prawo Vol. 20; no. 1; pp. 139 - 154
• Main Authors: Lis, Andrzej, Bello, Kreshnik, Górka, Joanna
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Torun Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika 01.01.2021; Nicolaus Copernicus University Press
• Subjects: Bibliometrics; Developing nations; Economic development; Economic policy; European integration; Higher Education; Migration Studies; National Economy; Transition economies; Albania; science mapping; bibliometrics; scientometrics; Albania; coword analysis; keywords cooccurrence analysis
• ISSN: 1898-2255; 2392-1625
• DOI: 10.12775/EiP.2021.009

Motivation: In recent years Albania has been an object of amassing research in many subject areas, including those related to economic sciences. Nevertheless, this growing scientific output has not been mapped from the bibliometric perspective. Thus, filling the identified gap in the body of knowledge is motivation for this study. Aim: The aim of the paper is to map the conceptual structure of research output in economic sciences with the focus on Albania as an object or a context of scientific inquiry in order to identify and explore leading and emerging topics. The study is oriented to answering the following research questions: (1) What are the leading topics/streams of scientific inquiry in the field? (2) What are the most up-to-date (emerging) topics/streams in the field? Results: Analysing co-occurrence of high-frequency keywords of Scopus-indexed publications including phrase ‘Albania’ in their titles, keywords and abstracts leads to identification of seven thematic clusters within the research field: (1) Albania as a transition economy, (2) economic aspects of migration, (3) Western Balkans studies, (4) education and innovation, (5) regional case and comparative studies, (6) economic growth and development, and (7) democratic transition and European integration. Moreover, the analysis reveals the following up-to-date topics attracting recently increasing attention of the academia: European integration, cointegration, consumer preferences, monetary policy, Western Balkans, higher education, performance, developing countries.