Ellison on Peer Review

MIT economist Glenn Ellison has a new paper asking, "Is Peer Review in Decline?" The abstract:

Over the past decade there has been a decline in the fraction of papers in top economics journals written by economists from the highest-ranked economics departments. This paper documents this fact and uses additional data on publications and citations to assess various potential explanations. Several observations are consistent with the hypothesis that the Internet improves the ability of high-profile authors to disseminate their research without going through the traditional peer-review process.

Here is my favorite line from the paper:

Harvard is widely regarded (I believe correctly) as having ascended to the top position in the profession.

But will Glenn be willing to repeat this in the future when we are competing with MIT for students and faculty?