Why the econ-blogosphere is here to stay

Two things happened in the last twenty-four hours which convinced me that the econ-blogosphere is healthy and will keep on going strong--at least my end of it.

One is the outpouring of good arguments from all over (see for example here and here) against someone's rash statement that the econ-blogosphere may be going the way of the used-car market. As these comments made clear, there are sufficient incentives and reasons for the blogs to remain active and produce high-quality content--but perhaps in different forms (less frequent postings, joint blogs, greater use of aggregators).

And second, in my trip to Nottingham I was simply stunned by how many people reported reading my blog. Not only that, people actually remembered my posts--some going quite a while back. With this kind of positive feedback, along with others like this, it is hard to imagine closing the operation down.

Not so incidentally, one of the unexpected scholarly benefits of having a blog is that it is like keeping an intellectual journal.  You get an idea, you jot it down in your blog. Some months later, you vaguely remember having had the idea and you google your own blog to recover it.  I am not kidding: I google my own blog all the time...

And here is the evidence: the first third of my talk at Nottingham was based on a couple of blog posts from a few weeks back (this and this). So maybe that someone also over-stated the bit about opportunity costs...

Comments

[Vladimir Paraschiv]

Thanks a lot for this nice idea of googling and of "intellectual journal" - I have been trying to figure out a way for my blog.

I also hope to get more unconventional thoughts on MPA/ID and on your work.

[Barkley Rosser]

Good to see you are newly enthused. Nottingham seems to have become quite a lively outfit in the last few years.

A lot of it depends on what one blogs on and why. Those who blog more closely to their research interests are less likely to suffer the o.c. problem. Mankiw presumably was doing it to help his students (and maybe sell more books). I also suspect that another motive was to try to overcome the problem of the contradictions between things he supported while working for Bush and what he had said in some of his textbooks.

[Arnold Kling]

You can read a review, by one of the lemons, of Dani's new book here:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/10/losing_to_dani_1.html

[Chandan]

Good that you did not go Mankiw's way!

[Darcio G. Martins]

It's not only in Nottingham that your blog is widely read, Professor Rodrik.

I'm a Econometrics/Microeconomics Professor here in Sao Paulo, Brazil and many (I mean MANY!!!) people (including students and Professors)read your blog...
By the way: I'm reading (again!) your "Growth Strategies" paper.

Regards

[wjd123]

I'm confused, Mankiw hasn't stopped writing for the general public or stopped writing on the web. What he has done is put an end to comments. I have never gone on Mankiw's blog site, yet I've read some of his posts. That's because Mark Thoma sometimes puts them up on his blog site. Sometimes I take things Dani has written on his blog site and post them in my comments on Mark Thoma's blog site. So unless these economist are going to start writing for a professional audience or stop posting their writings on the web, the econ-blogosphere will go on as long as economist put their fingers to the keyboard to say something they think needs saying.

I would conclude that even it you were to define a blog as a community of interest, meaning it has to have commentary, cross pollination insures that good economist won't disappear form the econ-blogosphere and there will be commentary.

There is another facet of running a blog site without comment that comes to mind. In doing so are you passing off your duty of maintenance for people who would comment if they could to other blog sites since they can always comment there?

One last thing, I had written a long version of these comments. It got long enough that I felt I would be imposing on the reader if I use it unabridged. One of the things I observed was that I could count on my fingers and toes the number of commentors on Dani's blog. Now that Dani has mentioned the number of people who have congratulated him on his blog, I feel rather presumptuous. I should have realized that the majority of readers were silent when he mentioned that he had 3000 hits on one of his posts.

I'd like to add my congratulations. I really like Dani's blog and wouldn't miss reading it. It also has a nice touch of aproachableness and humanity to it.

[Van Sales]

I visited this blog first time and found it very interesting and informative.. Keep up the good work thanks..