Discussants — Michael E. Rose, Ph.D. (Max-Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition)

Speaker

Michael E. Rose, Ph.D. (Max-Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition)

Abstract

We study the role of informal collaboration in academic knowledge production. Comparing published articles presented at the NBER Summer Institutes with and without discussants, we find that having a discussant increases a paper's probability of publication in prestigious journals, but not its citation count. Conditional on having a discussant, a paper's citation count and probability of publication in a prestigious journal increase in the discussant's prolificness. Though not random, our setting is conducive to studying the role of informal collaboration in academic knowledge production. Our findings support the existence of a quality-improving channel through which discussants improve the inherent quality of a paper. Conversely, we do not find evidence for the existence of a diffusion channel through which papers garner more citations because discussants diffuse information about the paper within their social network.

Authors

Co-Pierre Georg (University of Cape Town and Deutsche Bundesbank) — Daniel C. Opolot (University of Cape Town) — Michael E. Rose (Max-Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition)

Room

Virtually via Gotomeeting
If interested, please send an Email to kcg-conference@ifw-kiel.de to receive a Gotomeeting-Link to the seminar.