AEA Econ Bloggers Lunch

I asked a few economics bloggers to join me for an informal roundtable at the annual AEA conference (ongoing this weekend in SF), and was delighted when today we met. I won't get into the details of the discussion in this post, but want to publicly thank them for making time to meet.  My hope is that we can convene a larger group of economics bloggers in the future. It's a very interesting and unique group, and sometimes just getting great minds together and watching them interact creates a public good!

Thanks (and links) to:

Gregory J. Gordon – CEO of Social Science Research Network (http://www.SSRN.com)
James Hamilton – www.econbrowser.com
Garett Jones – former blogger at RightEconomy, now a professor of economics at GMU.
Paul Kedrosky - Infectious Greed http://paul.kedrosky.com/
Virginia Postrel - www.dynamist.com
Alex Tabarrok – www.marginalrevolution.com
David Warsh – www.economicprincipals.com

Some of things I learned include (1) the process of collaborative filtering is increasingly useful for discovery and evaluation, and a pioneer to watch is Slashdot, (2) commenting on blogs is arguably more valuable than posting for evaluating ideas ... look for weighted commenting/evaluation systems to supplant formalized referee systems over time, (3) blogs are just part of the spectrum of idea sharing, as is journal publishing, and simply having a web page is now essential to be part of a research community, (4) good ideas can filter up much faster through the academic community thanks to blogs, (5) it is very difficult to determine what revenue models will sustain the print news media, but one possible trend to watch for is the return of ideological patronage (e.g. think tank magazines) -- it's not just advertising and subscriptions that will sustain the sector, (6) it's still probably not advisable for graduate students or junior faculty to blog instead of focus on tenurable research ... for now, and (7) if blogging is representative, then risk-taking entrepreneurship will thrive, even in a recession.

Comments

[Chris Blattman]

Sad to have missed the lunch. I hope you'll entertain a dissenting opinion on conclusion 6:

http://chrisblattman.blogspot.com/2009/01/should-junior-faculty-blog.html

[Dustin H.]

Really interesting, really beneficial stuff for those of us aspiring to blog on a full-time basis. Would certainly like to hear more.

[pragzz]

On (6) I'm with Chris Blattman (and btw, he's got a great blog!).

I am part of a very large population segment in the world, who are neither economists nor political scientists, but slightly curious about the subject matter. If your goal is to attract and educate us, and get more of the general public interested in the subject matter you indulge in, then a greater number of better blogs are better. I've found graduate student and junior faculty blogs to be some of the most interesting in the many fields I've been looking at. Their views are fresh and interesting, and they are eager to learn...all of which they pass on to their readers. The tenured faculty (sorry guys!) seem to be lacking that. They cater to a much smaller, more elite audience. The outreach and education is much less.

On the rest of the points, I'm generally in agreement.

Thanks for sharing!

[emo]

This roundtable is a very good idea.

[Robert Shumake]

Just wanted to say that I read your blog quite frequently and I'm always amazed at some of the stuff people post here. But keep up the good work, it's always interesting.
See ya,

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