IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/8558.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of Economics Blogs

Author

Listed:
  • McKenzie, David
  • Özler, Berk

Abstract

There is a proliferation of economics blogs, with increasing numbers of economists attracting large numbers of readers, yet little is known about the impact of this new medium. Using a variety of experimental and non-experimental techniques, we try to quantify some of their effects. First, links from blogs cause a striking increase in the number of abstract views and downloads of economics papers. Second, blogging raises the profile of the blogger (and his institution) and boosts their reputation above economists with similar publication records. Finally, we find that a blog can transform attitudes about some of the topics it covers.

Suggested Citation

  • McKenzie, David & Özler, Berk, 2011. "The Impact of Economics Blogs," CEPR Discussion Papers 8558, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8558
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP8558
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mortensen, Dale & Pissarides, Christopher, 2011. "Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 1, pages 1-19.
    2. Cass Sunstein, 2008. "Neither Hayek nor Habermas," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 134(1), pages 87-95, January.
    3. Arai, Mahmood & Skogman Thoursie, Peter, 2006. "Giving up Foreign Names: An Empirical Examination of Surname Change and Earnings," Research Papers in Economics 2006:13, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    4. Craig E. Landry & Andreas Lange & John A. List & Michael K. Price & Nicholas G. Rupp, 2006. "Toward an Understanding of the Economics of Charity: Evidence from a Field Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 747-782.
    5. Stefano DellaVigna & Ethan Kaplan, 2007. "The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1187-1234.
    6. Tyler Cowen, 2008. "Why everything has changed: the recent revolution in cultural economics," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 32(4), pages 261-273, December.
    7. James Rockey, 2009. "Who is left-wing, and who just thinks they are?," Discussion Papers in Economics 09/23, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester, revised Feb 2014.
    8. Irwin, Douglas A., 1998. "Higher Tariffs, Lower Revenues? Analyzing the Fiscal Aspects of “The Great Tariff Debate of 1888”," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 58(1), pages 59-72, March.
    9. Ravallion Martin, 2009. "Should the Randomistas Rule?," The Economists' Voice, De Gruyter, vol. 6(2), pages 1-5, February.
    10. Henry Farrell & Daniel Drezner, 2008. "The power and politics of blogs," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 134(1), pages 15-30, January.
    11. Miriam Bruhn & David McKenzie, 2009. "In Pursuit of Balance: Randomization in Practice in Development Field Experiments," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(4), pages 200-232, October.
    12. William L. Davis & Bob G. Figgins & David Hedengren & Daniel B. Klein, 2011. "Economics Professors' Favorite Economic Thinkers, Journals, and Blogs (along with Party and Policy Views)," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 8(2), pages 126-146, May.
    13. Franklin G Mixon & Kamal P Upadhyaya, 2010. "Blogometrics," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 1-10.
    14. Daniel Drezner & Henry Farrell, 2008. "Introduction: Blogs, politics and power: a special issue of Public Choice," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 134(1), pages 1-13, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Blogging impact on academic papers
      by Inaki Villanueva in Applied economist on 2012-03-01 20:15:00
    2. Reflections on our job market series
      by ? in Development Impact on 2011-12-22 15:11:22
    3. Quantifying Some of the Impacts of Economics Blogs
      by UDADISI in UDADISI on 2014-04-03 03:28:00
    4. 31. Blogs of Economists: international lists by language
      by MCG Blogs de Economía in Euro-American Association: World Development on 2018-03-17 20:16:00
    5. Do cultural differences explain some of the variation in who blogs and what they say?
      by Berk Ozler in Development Impact on 2012-06-29 03:23:31
    6. What on Earth is ‘Development Impact’ Exactly?
      by Berk Ozler in Development Impact on 2012-04-05 18:17:26
    7. Economics Blogging Isn’t Just Procrastinating
      by Shailee Pradhan in student reporter on 2012-07-31 12:01:45

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kässi, Otto & Westling, Tatu, 2011. "Economics of Smash-Hit Papers: Spillover Evidence from the 'Male Organ Incident'," MPRA Paper 33173, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David McKenzie & Berk Özler, 2014. "Quantifying Some of the Impacts of Economics Blogs," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(3), pages 567-597.
    2. Gaudeul, Alexia & Mathieu, Laurence & Peroni, Chiara, 2008. "Blogs and the Economics of Reciprocal Attention," MPRA Paper 11298, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Jimmy Chan & Daniel Stone, 2013. "Media proliferation and partisan selective exposure," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 156(3), pages 467-490, September.
    4. Suresh de Mel & David McKenzie & Christopher Woodruff, 2019. "Labor Drops: Experimental Evidence on the Return to Additional Labor in Microenterprises," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 202-235, January.
    5. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    6. Gee, Laura K. & Schreck, Michael J., 2018. "Do beliefs about peers matter for donation matching? Experiments in the field and laboratory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 282-297.
    7. Lars Behlen & Oliver Himmler & Robert Jäckle, 2023. "Defaults and effortful tasks," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(5), pages 1022-1059, November.
    8. Ortega, Daniel & Scartascini, Carlos, 2015. "Don't Blame the Messenger: A Field Experiment on Delivery Methods for Increasing Tax Compliance," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 7284, Inter-American Development Bank.
    9. Chantal Toledo, 2016. "Do Environmental Messages Work on the Poor? Experimental Evidence from Brazilian Favelas," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 37-83.
    10. Sung Jae Jun & Sokbae Lee, 2023. "Identifying the Effect of Persuasion," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(8), pages 2032-2058.
    11. Behlen, Lars & Himmler, Oliver & Jaeckle, Robert, 2022. "Can defaults change behavior when post-intervention effort is required? Evidence from education," MPRA Paper 112962, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Jared Barton & Marco Castillo & Ragan Petrie, 2014. "What Persuades Voters? A Field Experiment on Political Campaigning," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 124(574), pages 293-326, February.
    13. Mastrorocco, Nicola & Minale, Luigi, 2018. "News media and crime perceptions: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 230-255.
    14. Daniel Ortega & Carlos Scartascini, 2015. "Don't Blame the Messenger: A Field Experiment on Delivery Methods for Increasing Tax Compliance," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 91741, Inter-American Development Bank.
    15. Schechter, Laura & Vasudevan, Srinivasan, 2023. "Persuading voters to punish corrupt vote-buying candidates: Experimental evidence from a large-scale radio campaign in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    16. Christian Peukert, 2019. "The next wave of digital technological change and the cultural industries," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 43(2), pages 189-210, June.
    17. McKenzie, David, 2011. "How can we learn whether firm policies are working in africa ? challenges (and solutions?) for experiments and structural models," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5632, The World Bank.
    18. Nicola Mastrorocco & Luigi Minale, 2016. "Information and Crime Perceptions: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series 1601, Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM).
    19. Elsby, Michael W.L. & Hobijn, Bart & Şahin, Ayşegül, 2015. "On the importance of the participation margin for labor market fluctuations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 64-82.
    20. Juan Pablo Atal & José Ignacio Cuesta & Felipe González & Cristóbal Otero, 2024. "The Economics of the Public Option: Evidence from Local Pharmaceutical Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(3), pages 615-644, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Blog; Dissemination; Influence; Impact evaluation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A11 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Role of Economics; Role of Economists
    • A23 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - Graduate

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8558. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.