An analysis of the intellectual structure of research on the financial economics of precious metals

We examine the literature on the financial economics of precious metals from a bibliometric and scientometric perspective. We surface the main trends and authors in the area over the last two decades, and provide estimates of the density of the networks of both researchers and research. Clear evidence is provided of an area dominated by a number of high output researchers, with distinct and clear areas of research with little overlap. A probabilistic topic modelling approach is further applied to determine the main topics of research in the area. We conclude that there are significant areas of potential synergy as yet unexploited in this research domain. We also highlight the current topics that can be a particularly important focus for these synergy efforts. •We examine the intellectual structure of research on precious metals from an economics perspective.•We use bibliometrics and topic modelling approaches to surface this.•The field appears fractured across topics, authors and countries.•There are a few dominant authors.•Topic modelling shows the evolution of topics over time.