The econoblogosphere

Everyone knows this is a favourite topic of mine and this week there has been links to share to interesting stories:

In the New York Times Nicholas Kristof wrote: Professors, we need you! saying amongst other things: 
Professors today have a growing number of tools available to educate the public, from online courses to blogs to social media. Yet academics have been slow to cast pearls through Twitter and Facebook.

There were quite a few responses including:

The column Nicholas Kristof should have written: "Why are economists the only professors we listen to about social and political issues?"
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) February 16, 2014

Chris Blattman posted an interview with him on how social media is shaping academia.

The New Yorker had a good article on Eric Jarosinski, the Prof behind @NeinQuarterly and how he "developed a crisp, allusive, irreverent Twitter voice: “Signifying nothing is harder than it looks.”"

Finally, John Cochrane, The Grumpy Economist, had an excellent blog on Mooconomics. He has some really good thoughts about massive open online learning. Read the whole thing.

More on publishing and social media

So I make the presentation in the previous post at the conference, but the people were not convinced. "Doing research and promoting it on social media will take too much time..."

But yesterday I read this nice post at The Monkey Cage blog on The promise and perils of sharing work in progress. Allow me to quote a bit:

Some significant part of being (viewed as) “successful” in academia is being visible to your peers.  Yes, the actual quality of your work matters more, but visibility counts for something.  In tenure decisions, departments often want evidence that you are “known” in the field.  There are lots of ways to build visibility—going to conferences, networking, etc.—but most all of them involve sharing your work, even in its early stages.

Social media is the way to go! I am going to follow the advice:

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." –Howard Aiken
— Michael Clemens (@m_clem) September 12, 2013

Publishing, perishing and social media

I have been going on about this for a while now and this week I am taking my social media story to a conference at the Maastricht School of Management. The conference has the theme: Revolutions in education: New opportunities for development.

My point is that it is getting tough to publish. Even your local society journal wants clean identification of causal effects. The quick reply to such worries are to do better work. I argue that that is necessary, but may not be sufficient. You also need to work on your reputation for doing good work and collaborate with people who already have that reputation. It is at this point that the social web can come to the rescue.

Prof Wim Naude and I will soon launch an online survey about this. Stay tuned for some empirical results.

So many links, so little time

I don't make enough time to share some thought on this blog. Weeks rush by with meetings, classes and late night reading of students' chapters 2 and 3 (they want to submit dissertations in November!). I do however have a few things to share.

The first came too late for my ESSA papers. Branco Malanovic (@BrancoMilan) tweeted a nice disclaimer that I could have used: All calculations are preliminary. All regressions are suggestive and show correlations, do not imply causation. And then he went on: Conclusions are provisory & not endorsed by the authors. Actually, the paper does not exist and was never written.

I have speculated a fair bit about why we need to upload full papers for this year's conference. I does not seem like they will be reviewed. Is there an oversupply of papers? Is the programme overbooked? Are the organisers prepared to turn away colleagues who have paid the registration fee and then have empty slots in the programme, or will they reorganise it into a shorter conference? Is the idea that having full papers available can give attendees a better idea of what they want to listen to before arriving in Bloem? I can see why full papers are required at something like CSAE, but I am underestimating ESSA? Could the whole thing be part of someone's research into papers and publications in SA economics and we are now part of the sample?

But anyway, other interesting links include this one to the Top 200 influential Economics blogs. There are some fun choices of names. By the way, Marginal Revolution blog celebrated 10 years this week. Someone congratulated Cowen and Tabarrok for blogging like they have never heard of opportunity cost!

On the subject of social media, David Roberts had a good post about why he is taking a year off from Grist. Burning out in the blogosphere is a real danger: "I spend each day responding to an incoming torrent of tweets and emails. I file, I bookmark, I link, I forward, I snark and snark and snark. All day long".

Finally, I found a nice MOOC article: MOOCs and beyond: The revolution to come. It gives a good summary of the brief history of MOOCs, the main players, the issues in the US. It makes a number of good points about the nature of this sea-change or revolution:

In the first instance, it is helpful to see this change not just as a new technology for delivering teaching to large numbers of students. It is really more a wider set of socio-technological changes that might be better explained within a theory of postindustrial education focusing on social media as the new culture.

And it goes on to explain:

Social media differ from industrial media: social media are based on "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content" (Kaplan & Haelein, 2010). In this sense then, MOOCs might be seen as a form of industrially scaled automation of the teaching function that uses Internet platforms to deliver content globally. MOOCs are based on the traditional one-to-many broadcast principle rather than the many-to-many, horizontal peer-learning structures. The question is to what extent massively large online classes permit or encourage peer learning or interaction.

Towards the end there is an interesting characterisation of MOOCs: as a type of marketing, as a financial policy for higher education, as an academic labour policy, as a speculative financial instrument, as an expression of Silicon Valley values, or as kind of entertainment media. It is worth reading the whole thing.

More Economics and blogs

I have written about economics and blogs a few times and in the past few weeks there have been a number of other articles and blog posts about the econoblogosphere that I want to share the links for:

• Early in July we learned that celebrity economists now feature prominently on the list of influential business thinkers complied by the Wall Street Journal.
• Time magazine listed Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen among its 25 best bloggers, 2013 edition.
• Noah Smith asked When have econ blogs changed your mind about something? and a lot of interesting comments and tweets followed.
• This week Raghuram Rajan questioned what he called the paranoid style in Economics. He has a good bit there (and goes on to discuss Krugman's blogs about the Reinhart & Rogoff story):

... for economists who actively engage the public, it is hard to influence hearts and minds by qualifying one’s analysis and hedging one’s prescriptions. Better to assert one’s knowledge unequivocally, especially if past academic honors certify one’s claims of expertise. This is not an entirely bad approach if it results in sharper public debate. The dark side of such certitude, however, is the way it influences how these economists engage contrary opinions.

In the econonblogosphere Keynes' famous quote is probably more true than ever:

Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

The joys of the econoblogosphere

With Johan Fourie celebrating his 100th blog post today, he reminded me of the joys of the econoblogosphere. Allow me to refer to his blog like Tyler Cowan would: it is self-recommending. Congratulations to Johan on this blogiversary.

Though we are still very few in South Africa, I want to recommend a number of my colleagues for readers to have a look at:

• Riaan Rossouw is writing good posts at The hitchhiker's guide to Economics.
• Carike Claassen is posting interesting stories at Economics is everywhere.
• Requier Wait focusses on the Economics of oil and gas in Africa.

We all try to pitch in on the School's blog. My latest is on the environment and carbon taxes.

Chalk dust to star dust

Tomorrow I am speaking at UP's departmental seminar and quickly want to share the slides here. I really hoped that Manoel warned everyone that it is not going to be about serious research. For a while now I have been thinking about how South Africa's academic economists use social media and I finally have a presentation. I also have a short questionnaire that I hope they will complete. If it goes well, I will go on the road and bring it to your school or department.

The end of the world postponed, blogging continues in 2013

2013 is off to a quick start and I have a few resolutions for this blog. The important ons is to read more and write better. But first, here is a quick recap of 2012:

• Somehow I managed 78 posts. They were unevenly distributed over the year, but looking back at the number, that is not bad. I also wrote, edited or was somehow involved in another 125 on the School's blog.
• The posts here had an amazing 6983 views, averaging 581 a month!
• The two most popular posts were my thoughts on economic indicators and advice for post-grads to think more like researchers. The most popular page remains the basics of geographical economics.

My big plans for this year draws inspiration from an interview that the FT recently had with Tyler Cowen (of Marginal Revolution-fame). He is a self-described infovore and that sounds like something cool to aspire to be.  I particularly agree with this bit:

Nevertheless, I wonder whether it is not more important to learn the languages of the future: is it better to learn code or Mandarin? “I don’t think it’s either,” Cowen says. “I think it’s how to understand psychology. To understand marketing. Because the more wealth you have, and the more unequally concentrated it is, the more pressure there is for the attention of people with money.”

This fits nicely with an HBR blog post on hyperconnectivity, branding and entrepreneurship, as well as Esther Dyson's Project Syndicate post on The rise of the attention economy. So expect more blog posts, tweets and Facebook updates!

This year I am School Director and also teaching introductory Economics to the first year students. I hope to share resources and insights on things like management in higher ed, balancing teaching and research, and teaching with technology.

So here is to 2013.

Friday afternoon reading

I'm stuck at the office on a Friday afternoon, trapped by a light hail storm and thought to do a quick round-up of links for the week.

In the geographical economics vein The Economist's Free Exchange blog has a nice post on how cities matter for growth. It also quotes research about the importance of research even for academic work: 

when a prominent researcher moves from one city to another, his peers in the origin city are less likely to cite his patents. Innovation today requires an ever-larger crowd of experts, preferably working in the same garage.  

This nicely resonated with Johan Fourie's post on the agglomeration of top restaurants in Stellenbosch.

The New Enquiry had an interesting essay about the rise of the celebrity Economist. They are not to keen on the idea and concludes:

In the online marketplace of ideas, the influence of a few celebrity economists creates an illusion of scarcity of new, heterodox voices. Yet now more than ever, to prevent costly and irreparable policy errors, economics needs its crowded-out Cassandras.

Noah Smith Asked whether econ blogging can hurt your career? He doubts it and I agree. Blogs and working papers are ever more relevant and there are many more voices out there than just the few celebrities.

Finally, I also read a good post at Inside HigherEd on technology and education. These days terms like MOOCs, BYOD, flipping the classroom are everywhere, but in fact, the ideas about technology and education have a long history:

The sort of tools that we have needed to help students learn have been around for 100 years, albeit continuously improved. It is our job to - finally - use those tools.

Finally, finally, congrats to Economist colleagues who have new NRF ratings: Andrea Saayman (NWU), Stan du Plessis (US), Servaas vd Berg (US), Steve Koch (UP) and James Blignaut (UP). These are the ones that I have heard of, but please add a comment if there is more good news to share.

I don't need to be convinced about the joys of blogging

But maybe you still need a reason to jump in?

This morning I came across three nice posts describing blogging as academic break dancing, the vitues of blogging and a proposal for blogging for promotion. Here are some nice bits:

From the blog Transition times:

All I can tell you is that it’s been a long time since I’ve felt as intellectually engaged as I do now that I’ve started blogging again.

Blogging–and publicizing my posts via Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other social media outlets–has allowed me to connect with people I never would have been able to reach in any other way.

From Martin Weller writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Previously if I wanted to convey an idea or a research finding, my choices were limited to a conference paper or journal article or, if I could work it up, a book. These choices still remain, but in addition I can create a video, podcast, blog post, slidecast, and more. It may be that a combination of these is ideal—a blog post gets immediate reaction and can then be worked into a conference presentation, shared through SlideShare, or turned into a paper that is submitted to a journal. In each case the blog or social network becomes a key route for sharing and disseminating the findings.

From Greg Downey writing on a blog about Neuroanthropology:

But we can also act locally, serving as a body of peers for each other’s reviews.  As an online anthropology writer on Neuroanthropology, and commenter and participant in discussions in lots of online forums, you may very well be precisely the sort of person who is my ‘peer’ if you’re reading this.  So why not crowd source our letters of reference to make the case for the importance of our online publishing? 

A few good posts: New cities, place-dependent output and SEZs in Africa

I came across three good blog posts on economic geography today and would like to recommend the further reading. 

At the Marginal Revolution blog Alex Tabarrok linked to a new Credit Suisse report, Opportunities in an urbanizing world. He highlights the close association between US state level GDP and the urbanization rate and shows that urban dwellers generate much lower levels of CO2 emissions per GDP per capita:

At the Economist's Free exchange blog Ryan Avent writes that modern economic growth is inextricably linked to agglomeration. He argues that the driving forces are rural-urban migration and the idea generating capacity of cities (the city as workshop). He finishes up with the following:

"...you can make people wealthy by making places wealthy OR by moving people to wealthy places. It is a very funny (and not funny ha ha) characteristic of economics, that it seems to focus overwhelmingly—indeed, almost exclusively—on trying to figure out the former, even though the historical record of success is much greater for the latter".

This ties in with a Let's talk development blog by the World Bank's chief economist on SEZs in Africa. Policymakers have recently launched a new wave of spatially targeted initiatives, but caution is required. Earlier initiatives failed due to to poor governance, a lack of institutional framework and political commitment, weak implementation capacity, and a lack of proper monitoring and evaluation mechanisms. The blog goes on to argue that Africa needs a new SEZ strategy that builds on a number of thrusts:

• Stronger stakeholder ownership.
• Better business environment inside the zone.
• Starting small.
• Flexibility and autonomy at local level.
• Technology transfer and skills training.
• Better linkages with the local economy.
• Clear objectives with sound benchmarking and competition.

These could be criteria for many of the local SEZ initiatives recently published by the DTI. Is it sensible to try to make the economy grow at Coega, or should more people move to Gauteng? Can we tick this list for a fuel cell cluster in the North West?

The econoblogosphere

Recently there has been marked interest in the impact of blogs on teaching and research. David McKenzie and Berk Olzer of the World Bank have argued that there are benefits to the blogger and substantial positive externalities associated with good economics blogs.

I do not want to make the all the arguments for blogging now. One of my research leave dreams is to put together a presentation on why South African economists should start blogging and to travel the country, spreading the word. For now I want to mention David McKenzie's recent blog on journal turnaround times to highlight the power of blogs.

His point is that it takes time to publish papers and few journals publish turnaround times. The AER is way out of my league but it is interesting to note that in 2011 a paper there was in review for an average of 37 weeks. From submission to acceptance took 69 weeks and from thereon a further 61 weeks to publication. This is not to say that AER is quick or slow, but that the latest issue of any journal does not present the latest research. And then a paper in the AER represents to pinnacle of a body of good work that was built up over years before that first submission.

So how does one get to know what is going on, or let others know what you are working on? Earlier this year Paul Krugman wrote about open science:

...the traditional model of submit, get refereed, publish, and then people will read your work broke down a long time ago. In fact, it had more or less fallen apart by the early 80s.Even then, nobody at a top school learned stuff by reading the journals; it was all working papers, with the journals serving as tombstones. 

You knew which working papers to read by being in the right conference loop. "Journal publication was so slow relative to the pace of ongoing work that it no longer acted as an information conduit". Today it is all about online working papers and blogs.

A key part of the research process involves academic engagement: demonstrating and defending your work. Typically this occurs at seminars and conferences and eventually publishing working papers and journal articles. Blogs provide an additional outlet to disseminate ideas and receive feedback. The format holds a number of benefits:

• The writing has to be accessible, which opens the discussion to non-specialists, policymakers and students.
• The feedback is rapid.
• It can foster a virtual community – you do not need to be in a large department with an active seminar series and can participate from anywhere.

This is my call to South Africa's academic economists: Eat, sleep, blog, Economics.