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.

Reciprocity in blogging networks

What makes a blog successful? Well, first define success. It can be the number of people reading it, the number of comments on it, or the revenue from advertisements. I do not have benchmarks to compare mine, but I am quite sure my blog does poorly on at least on three of these definitions. Thus, what am I doing wrong?

Alexia Gaudeul and Chiara Peroni may have the answer. They use LiveJournal to study how bloggers, write, comment and interact. The keys to success seems to be for the blogger to comment on other blogs, thus eliciting reciprocal comments. The blogger also needs to reply to comments on his own blog. This sounds like bloggers are only among themselves and form cliques and the one with the most friends wins. Just like in high school. But I think this is all coming from the dataset, which does not record lurkers and other outsiders.

Quite obviously, I am doing everything wrong. I hardly comment on other blogs. I do not continuously follow comments, as I only check them when it is time for another post and rarely follow up. I'll make an effort.

A look back at 2009

This is just a very selfish look back on the Economic Logic blog for 2009. Over the past year, I concentrated much more on discussing research, which has attracted, from what I can see, a larger and especially more loyal readership. And what was read the most?

1. The evil empire strikes again
   
2. Why so much teenage sex?
   
3. Who buys online porn
   
4. One more argument against banning child labor
   
5. Labor supply elasticity: micro versus macro estimates
   

Those that get more traffic are those that get referenced on other blogs, get sent around through emails and get traffic from non-regulars though Google. It looks like sex still sells. As for comments, they are still low but more numerous that last year. Those that attracted the most discussion were:

1. Journals are dead
   
2. Do new drugs reduce medical costs?
   
3. Development economics needs to refocus on theory
   
4. Exploiting sunk costs
   
5. A new look at the Laffer Curve
   
6. The poor living quarters of economists
   

It is interesting that the intersection between both sets is empty. That can happen when one picks the top five or six over 231 posts, but still intriguing.

Two years of blogging

It is now two years that I am blogging here. While two years seems like a re rather short time, it adds up to about 450 posts. All in all, imagine reading 400+ papers and provide your opinion about them. In retrospect, this is a huge task!

But I enjoy doing it, and it appears a growing readership does, too. While it obviously hampers the time I can devote to my own research, I still enjoy it. Again, I would hope this would generate a bit more discussion, and it has improved over last year. But still, do not hesitate to discuss my opinions or offer your own about the papers. And I especially encourage the discussed authors. Few took the opportunity so far.

Speaking of comments. The increase in popularity of Economic Logic implies also that it appeared on the radar of spam commenters. I try to keep up with them, but I have only so much time. Hence I have now started moderation of comments on older posts. Comments are still welcome, but given that for non-current posts the signal-to-noise ratio was becoming really low, I had to intervene.

Finally, consider a donation. I could be doing consulting work or writing more papers instead of this blog. There is a clear opportunity cost for me. So if you were pondering giving something to the lady that brings your daily junk mail, go for me instead...

Donations

As you may notice on the left bar, I have set up a donation button. Why? With the time I spend on this blog, not only writing but also cleaning spam comments, I figure that sooner or later the "lost" time will amount to a publication and the associated merit pay. So, I want to compensate this opportunity cost by allowing user to donate through PayPal. Not that I expect to strike it rich this way. I get personal satisfaction from the blog, so I do not expect complete compensation.

I have had Google ads as well for quite a while now, and they bring only peanuts. I have also had some requests for ads, which I have declined so far because they did not seem appropriate. But that may change.

Economic Logic is one year old!

I have already been posting for a year, and it has been fun doing so. While I started by commenting on the world around me from the perspective of an economist, I soon started discussing research. I guess it is just in my blood.

For those interested in blogging: it is quite a commitment to write on a regular basis, but it is rewarding in the sense that putting thoughts on "paper" allows one to put them in order, and sufficiently well for them to sustain the criticism of others. It is, however, somewhat time consuming. If I continue at this rhythm, it will cost me a paper a year, but I still think it is worth it.

While there are fewer comments than I anticipated, and while the readership is still rather confidential (although being featured on Econ Academics gave it a bump), I still hope I make some impact and get people interested in the topics I approach. Some posts had indeed some impact, here is a list:

The most viewed posts: Who will win the Olympics?, Why do people vote?, 2008=1929?

The most commented: Gas taxes are much too low, Illegal immigrants have rights that need to be defended, What is wrong with today's undergraduates?,

The most linked to: What is the FDIC thinking?, Blanchard's sad state of macroeconomics, I am upset.

In the comments section, I encourage you to state what you liked or disliked about the blog so far. It may or may not influence what I post in the future. But one thing is for sure: I will continue posting about research.

Economic Logic on IDEAS

It is possible on IDEAS to create reading lists. Economic Logic has now its own. It lists all papers discussed on this blog, along with alternative versions of them, in case readers cannot get access to a gated version. Also, the abstracts pages of the cited papers also have a link back to the reading list, thus allowing others to discover this blog.

Let's see whether this reading list will increase traffic here as much as Economic Logic's listing on Econ Academics did.

Economics Academics Blog

A new blog portal, Econ Academics, has been unveiled. It features blogs that discuss research in Economics, as opposed to current events or each other. I am happy not only to see mine featured, but also to discover a few other like-minded ones. And they are good. Check them out.

Results of the syndicating poll

Two weeks ago, I received an inquiry from Nouriel Roubini's RGE Monitor whether I would be willing to have some of my post featured integrally there. I have let the users of this blog vote on this offer and the results are in. Should I accept this offer?

• Yes, anything that publicizes this blog: 13 votes, 38%
  
• Only if money is involved: 6 votes, 17%
  
• No, they want to exploit me: 10 votes, 29%
  
• Whatever: 5 votes, 14%
  

What do I learn from this? First, there were actually 34 readers who bothered to vote, which is a good start. Second, there is no clear winner. A majority want me to participate (13+6), almost half seem to think serious money needs to be involved (6+10). I interpret this as: Go ahead, but make sure you get a fair cut from the deal.

So, I will now I will wait to hear from a RGE Monitor representative and see what it has to offer for me.

Syndicating this blog?

I just receive a message, also sent to 50 other bloggers, from Nouriel Roubini to become a contributor to RGE Monitor. His team would pick my post from this blog, vet them, and publish them on his blog, with attribution.

What is in it for me? A link back to my blog, a free subscription to the fee-based part of the RGE Monitor (valued at a whooping US$5000 a year), publicizing Economic Logic on the blog, and a "bio page" with a picture.

Note that there are already plenty of blog agregators out there, and anybody is free to create a blogroll like the one I have in the sidebar... I do not particularly value a subscription to something I was never tempted to read. A blog is to a great extend done for the readers, so I'll let my readers decide whether I should participate. I have added a poll in the side bar to that effect.