David Card and Stefano DellaVigna have a paper on this. Findings explained in voxeu:
‘Publish or perish’ has been the rule in academic economics since forever, but there is a widespread perception that publishing in the best journals has become harder and much slower. This column presents new evidence confirming the perception. The number of articles published in top journals has fallen, while the number and length of submissions have risen. The profession should consider recalibrating publication demands to reflect this new reality.
The real problem is length of papers….they keep rising and rising..
