Tuesday 8 January 2008

Economists and the public good

At Organisations and Markets, Peter Klein notes
An interesting result from Aaron Schiff’s survey of econo-bloggers (I was a respondent):

There [was] a series of questions asking respondents to rate factors according to their importance as motivations for blogging on a scale of 1 to 5. "Fun or entertainment," "To raise my profile," "Contribute to policy/political debates," "To educate the public or disseminate research." and "As a way of recording thoughts or ideas" were rated highest, all with a median score of 4. "Contribute to academic debates" had a median of 3, "To get reader feedback from comments" and "To improve writing skills" both scored 2, while "Actual or potential direct income" and "Actual or potential indirect income" both had a median of 1.
So we have economists providing public goods!

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