As If... the Keys of the Keyboard Were Being Depressed by an INVISIBLE HAND...

The Economist looks in the window and says "Hi!":

Economists' blogs | The invisible hand on the keyboard | Economist.com: Aug 3rd 2006: From The Economist print edition: Why do economists spend valuable time blogging?

What Mr Hayek could not have known about knowledge was that 70 years later weblogs, or blogs, would be pooling it into a vast, virtual conversation. That economists are typing as prolifically as anyone speaks both to the value of the medium and to the worth they put on their time.

Like millions of others, economists from circles of academia and public policy spend hours each day writing for nothing. The concept seems at odds with the notion of economists as intellectual instruments trained in the maximisation of utility or profit. Yet the demand is there: some of their blogs get thousands of visitors daily, often from people at influential institutions like the IMF and the Federal Reserve. One of the most active "econobloggers" is Brad DeLong, of the University of California, Berkeley, whose site, http://delong.typepad.com... holds forth on a spread of topics from the Treasury to Trotsky.

So why do it? "It's a place in the intellectual influence game," Mr DeLong replies (by e-mail, naturally). For prominent economists, that place can come with a price. Time spent on the internet could otherwise be spent on traditional publishing or collecting consulting fees.... Gary Becker, a Nobel-prize winning economist, and Richard Posner, a federal circuit judge and law professor, began a joint blog in 2004. The pair, colleagues at the University of Chicago, believed that their site, >http://becker-posner-blog.com>, would permit "instantaneous pooling (and hence correction, refinement, and amplification) of the ideas and opinions, facts and images, reportage and scholarship, generated by bloggers." The practice began as an educational tool for Greg Mankiw, a professor of economics at Harvard and a former chairman of George Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. His site, http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com, started as a group e-mail sent to students, with commentary on articles and new ideas. But the market for his musings grew beyond the classroom, and a blog was the solution. "It's a natural extension of my day job--to engage in intellectual discourse about economics," Mr Mankiw says....

Top universities once benefited from having clusters of star professors. The study showed that during the 1970s, an economics professor from a random university, outside the top 25 programmes, would double his research productivity by moving to Harvard. The strong relationship between individual output and that of one's colleagues weakened in the 1980s, and vanished by the end of the 1990s.... That anyone with an internet connection can sit in on a virtual lecture from Mr DeLong means that his ideas move freely beyond the boundaries of Berkeley, creating a welfare gain for professors and the public.

Universities can also benefit in this part of the equation. Although communications technology may have made a dent in the productivity edge of elite schools, productivity is hardly the only measure of success for a university. Prominent professors with popular blogs are good publicity, and distance in academia is not dead: the best students will still seek proximity to the best minds. When a top university hires academics, it enhances the reputations of the professors, too. That is likely to make their blogs more popular.

Self-interest lives on, as well. Not all economics bloggers toil entirely for nothing. Mr Mankiw frequently plugs his textbook. Brad Setser, of Roubini Global Economics, an economic-analysis website, is paid to spend two to three hours or so each day blogging as a part of his job. His blog, http://rgemonitor.com/blog/setser, often concentrates on macroeconomic topics, notably China. Each week, 3,000 people read it--more than bought his last book. "I certainly have not found a comparable way to get my ideas out. It allows me to have a voice I would not otherwise get," Mr Setser says. Blogs have enabled economists to turn their microphones into megaphones. In this model, the value of influence is priceless...

Comments

[Aniruddha G. Kulkarni]

Many times your want a DeLong blog just as an antidote for The Economist.

In fact, if DeLong blog were to be converted into a glossy magazine at an affordable price, I would buy it and stop my subscription to The Economist!

[your student next semester]

In honor of the Professor and his blog, I named a freeway exit after him--DeLong Ave-- in Novato of 101N.

I'll pass along my personal information in class so we can, you know *wink* *wink*, make the necessary grade arrangements.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

"That economists are typing as prolifically as anyone speaks both to the value of the medium and to the worth they put on their time."

What?

[tom s.]

I'm struck by the different blogging rates among disciplines. For example, as an ex-chemist I have looked for good academic chemistry blogs as a way of finding out what people are talking about and thinking about in that field - but there's nothing outside blogs with a science education focus. Nada. Zip. Very disappointing.

[Robert Bell]

Maybe it's just my distorted view of information and economics, but aren't there some serious disincentives for bloggers to say anything too interesting?

Why would they say something that could be used to earn excess returns (say some macro or other insight) or something that could be published - in effect willfully giving up their own IP?

So econ blogs might be interesting, but not too interesting ...

[Bruce Webb]

"Why would they say something that could be used to earn excess returns (say some macro or other insight) or something that could be published"

While it might be heresy on an economics blog, not everything is about excess returns.

If you want real time input into breaking economic or political news, if you want to shape policy as it happens, you strive to have a real time forum to inject that input. And a blog that is read and more importantly referenced widely is a way to have that input.

How many people knew Mark Thoma before March 6, 2005? Well his Site Meter counter is sitting at 749.562.

[andres]

"Why would they say something that could be used to earn excess returns (say some macro or other insight) or something that could be published?"

Mainly because 99.9% of blog discussion on economics is simply the application of already-existing theory and principles, even where such principles conflict. Even the drift of the academic mainstream in fact repeats what was said a long time ago: in economics, there is relatively little that is totally new. To take macroeconomics, the New Classical school is simply a restatement in a different language of what Say, Ricardo, Marshall, and Walras wrote on the subject, while Post-Keynesian economists say relatively little that is substantially different from what Keynes, Kalecki, Sraffa, and Fisher wrote back in the 1930's.

What is original in what gets published today are the relatively narrow topics in which broad theories get applied; but that type of analysis is one which is too long-winded to fit into comment spaces such as these.

[yabonn]

"It's a place in the intellectual influence game,"

So the real answer : "because i like it, because i have fun doing it" is decidedly unspeakable.

Got it everybody? It's ok if you don't have pleasure doing it.

[thebizofknowledge.com]

Of course those involved in economics have an interest in making profits for themselves and for the businesses that employ them, but I think that many feel a genuine desire to share their knowledge and expertise with their colleagues and to benefit from the knowledge and expertise that is reciprocated by those reading their posts.