One intriguing facet is the scholarly visibility that ensued. If nothing else, an attractive natural experiment came into being.Įvents such as this can be viewed from many angles and disciplines. Arguably the whole incident with all its publicity was completely unanticipated, and came as a surprise to everyone involved. Tim Harford of Financial Times dubbed it the ‘smash-hit economics research paper of the summer’. In the weeks that followed it amassed some 175000 downloads and a global coverage in print, television and online media. Something quite unlike was on display in July 2011 following the publication of ‘Male Organ and Economic Growth: Does Size Matter?’ (Westling 2011) which explored the link between penile length and economic growth a. As infrequently do they permeate the online community beyond the academic confines. Conforming to expected patterns, papers residing on the same web page as the hit paper evidence very significant increases in downloads which also supports the spillover thesis.Įconomics research papers seldom make headlines. We find that part of the spillover effect could be attributable to Internet search engines’ influence on browsing behavior. It seems that hit papers increase the exposure of previously less downloaded papers. This study finds that the spillover effect to average economics paper demand is positive and statistically significant. Difference in differences and regression discontinuity analysis are conducted to elicit the spillover patterns. In particular, we analyze how the very substantial visibility influenced the downloads of Helsinki Center of Economic Research discussion papers. We consider the publicity of ‘Male Organ and Economic Growth: Does Size Matter?’ as an exogenous shock to economics discussion paper demand, a natural experiment of a sort. This study explores the short-run spillover effects of popular research papers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |