On the state of economic research blogging

If you are an economist and maintain a blog, the best way to get an audience is to get into fights with pundits and journalists, and you then easily become a pundit yourself, losing the impartiality you are supposed to have as a scientist. The most popular economist bloggers are either openly libertarian or quite far right, or in reaction resolutely on the left. Almost all engage in politicking and wars of words and have basically abandoned the principles of impartiality their scientific upbringing taught them. The impartial scientists are drowned.

EconAcademics.org tries to rectify that, aggregating blog posts that discuss research, or at least refer to research. The list of monitored blogs is impressively long, yet it saddens me to see that the "popular" blogs are nowhere to be seen near the top of those who have discussed the most research, despite their considerable volume of posts. While I could be proud to be (far) ahead on this last list, it saddens me again how little consistent discussion of research there is. Out in the blogosphere, are we really so few economists doing this? Why can't the top economics blogs relate more to the results of their field?

A positive externality of EconAcademics.org is that is compiles a list of all papers I discussed, including where the ultimately got published. I have put the link in the sidebar and will come back to discuss it sometime soon.

Four years, 1000 posts

I am now entering the fifth year of blogging, and this is the 1000th post, which means I have discussed about one thousand papers. Personally, I find this an incredibly high number. In fact there are so many that I once discussed a paper a second time, forgetting I already did take care of it before.

This is also my yearly opportunity to reassess whether what I am doing here makes sense at all. I obviously get no outside reward for the blog, but that is OK. Only the top bloggers get recognition, and I am not one of them. So it is all about personal gratification, and I think I am still happy about doing it. It is sometimes a struggle to find the time to put things on "paper", but as I still enjoy it, I'll continue for another year.

This year of blogging was dominated by the Bruno Frey saga, which I believe has attracted quite a few new regular readers. That is noticeable because readers from Germany, Switzerland and Australia are much more frequent now. The blog seems also to have an unusually strong and loyal readership in Slovenia.

If you wonder what the most popular posts during this year were, here they are:

1. On the ethics of research cloning
   
2. Why boards keep bad CEOs
   
3. Keep CEOs off outside boards
   
4. Do we need awards in Economics?
   
5. The Bruno Frey bubble
   
6. Economists did see the bubble coming
   
7. What is an MBA worth?
   

I am also encouraged to see that discussion of the posts has picked up compared to previous years. Again, Bruno Frey has helped here, but it is also apparent in the regular posts about Economics research. Unfortunately, spam comments have started flocking to this blog, and I apologize that some make it live before I notice them.

Another year of blogging

How quickly that year passed, and I am once more amazed at the quantity I have posted. One hardly notices when you write a couple of paragraphs each day, but it sure accumulates: 271 posts during the year, 40 more than the previous year, reflecting the lack of vacation time...

Should I continue? I still like doing it, even though it takes much more time to write even two paragraphs about a paper than simply reading it. While I do not have credible statistics to back it up, I have the impression that I have a rather loyal (and mostly silent) readership. There are over 700 subscribers on the Google Reader I use, probably more elsewhere and through various relays. I only wish there were more discussions, although I understand it can be difficult to participate.

Comments averaged at two a post, a rather modest number. But some posts attracted a lively discussion. Here are the ones with the most comments:

1. Why criticize modern macro when you do not follow modern macro?
   
2. The economics of compartments
   
3. On the dangers of penny auctions, an example
   
4. Is democracy really worth it?
   
5. About this obsession with lawns
   
6. Doing Calvo all wrong
   
7. About the state of US higher education
   
8. Smoking bans versus tobacco taxation

And which were the most popular posts of the year?

1. The economics of compartments
   
2. Worker overconfidence and unemployment duration
   
3. What is an MBA worth? (from 2008!)
   
4. How to increase employment, and at what cost (from 2009)
   
5. On the dangers of penny auctions, an example
   
6. Is the US a third world country?
   
7. Posting calories in restaurants is Pareto improving
   
8. The AEA is missing a golden opportunity
   
9. The problem with experimental economics: people are weird
   
10. Household size heterogeneity and the representative agent

Anyway, here come another year of blogging on research in Economics.