Tag: dissemination

The Impact of Economics Blogs

David McKenzie (World Bank, BREAD, CEPR and IZA) and Berk Özler (World Bank). Policy Research Working Paper 5783. August 2011. Available as pdf. See also the authors’ blog about this paper.

Introduction: Practically nonexistent a decade ago, blogs by economic scholars have become commonplace. Economics blogs, such as Freakonomics, Marginal Revolution, Paul Krugman and Greg Mankiw, have built large followings – whether measured by subscriptions in Google Reader or by average daily page views (1). Cowen (2008) argues that blogs are the main way that the general public consumes economics in a given day and guesstimates that “…about 400,000 people are reading economics blogs and digesting them” on a daily basis.

These blogs not only give their creators an outlet to disseminate their ideas and work immediately in a format that is more accessible, but also enable instant feedback, are easy to share on the open web, and allow the bloggers a personal style rather than the inaccessible format of academic journals (Glenn, 2003; Dunleavy and Gilson 2011).

Our motivation in examining the impact of economics blogs stems from two observations about blogs and questions that arise from these. First, it seems fair to state that “…informing is the core business of blogging.” (McKenna and Pole 2008, p. 102) This leads to the question of whether blogs improve the dissemination of research findings and whether their readers are indeed more informed (2). On the one hand, coupling the large readership of blogs with the argument of Cowen (2008) that the best ones are written at a level far higher than that of any major newspapers offers the promise that economics blogs may have sizeable effects on the dissemination of economic research and on the knowledge and attitudes of their readers.
Continue reading “The Impact of Economics Blogs”

Conference on ICT for Monitoring & Evaluation

 

Date: 18 October 2011
Venue: New Delhi, India

[found courtesy of Sarah Earl]

“Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is ubiquitous in every aspect of our lives. Gradually ICT is acquiring a key role in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of development projects by reinforcing the efficacy of data management and processing processes. As ICT is a whole new world for many professionals in the development sector, it becomes important to seek synergies from leading development actors and practitioners for perspective building, dissemination of knowledge and furthering the use of ICT in monitoring, evaluation and information system. How ICT influences on the collective activities and interest of the society in general has become an ineluctable question which could be well answered through the monitoring and evaluation process.”

“In this context a conference on ICT for monitoring and evaluation is being organized by Sambodhi Research & Communications on October 18, 2011 in New Delhi. The theme of the conference is “ICT for Monitoring, Evaluation, and Information System: Exploring New Frontiers.”

To participate in the conference click the following to download

Conference Flyer
Registration form

For more information on the conference
Contact : Dr. Mary/Ms. Padmavati
Email : contact@sambodhi.co.in
Tel : 011             47593300-99

Assessing the impact of blogs: Some evidence and analysis

See

The Impact of Economic Blogs – Part I: Dissemination by David McKenzie, Berk Özler, 2011-08-05.

  • Question 1: “Do blogs lead to increased dissemination of research papers?””
  • Answer:  “Blogging about a paper causes a large increase in the number of abstract views and downloads in the same month. These increases are massive compared to the typical abstract views and downloads these papers get. However, only a minority of readers click through the blog to the download.” [view paper by McKenzie for more details]

The Impact of Blogs Part II: Blogging enhances the blogger’s reputation. But, does it influence policy? by David McKenzie, Berk Özler, 2011-08-10

  • Question 2: Does blogging improve reputation?
  • Answer: “Regular blogging is strongly and significantly associated with being more likely to be viewed as a favorite economist.”
  • Question 3: Does blogging influence policy?
  • Answer1: This is where we haven’t been able to find much evidence to date [see blog for details of some case examples]
  • Answer2: In response to a case example provided by a reader: “my sense is that:
    i) very few posts actually influence policy
    ii) there are very few readers of blogs who are actually in a position to influence policy, but iii) it only takes one post read by the right reader to potentially make a big difference. This poses enormous problems for statistical inference, since these are likely rare events, but I think it is still useful to see whether there are in fact any plausible candidates.”

The Impact of Blogs Part III: Results from a new survey and an experiment! by David McKenzie, Berk Özler, COMING ON 2011-08-15

  • Including these headings: Survey evidence – why don’t you just ask blog readers?; The Experiment; Impacts on institutional reputation; Impacts on knowledge and attitudes.
  • The Summary:“Using a variety of data sources and empirical techniques, we feel we have provided quantitative evidence that economic blogs are doing more than just providing a new source of procrastination for writers and readers. To our knowledge, these findings are the first quantitative evidence to show that blogs are having some impacts. There are large impacts on dissemination of research; significant benefits in terms of the bloggers becoming better known and more respected within the profession; positive spillover effects for the bloggers’ institutions; and some evidence from our experiment that they may influence attitudes and knowledge among their readers. Blogs potentially have many impacts, and we are only measuring some of them, but the evidence we have suggests economics blogs are playing an important role in the profession.”

RD Comment: Two comments of note towards the end of the paper:

  • “…Table 6 shows that blog readership has not changed many of these attitudes towards methodology, with no significant experimental changes in the full sample. Amongst the subsamples, the most significant change occurs in the male sample, where there is an increase in the proportion that believe that it is difficult to succeed as a development economist on the job market without having a randomized experiment.”
  • “There is also some evidence among the research-focused subsample that more agree with the statement that external validity is no more of a concern in experiments than in most non-experimental studies (something discussed in David’s favorite rant).”
  • RD comment: This may be true, but experimental studies are often held up as being of more value than non-experimental studies. So the lack of difference is a problem, not a non-issue

 

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