The role of conferences on the pathway to academic impact: Evidence from a natural experiment

Fernanda de Leon and Ben McQuillin ()
Additional contact information
Fernanda de Leon: University of Kent

No 14-08, Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Abstract: This paper provides evidence for the role of conferences in generating visibility for academic work, using a ‘natural experiment’: the last-minute cancellation – due to ‘Hurricane Isaac’ – of the 2012 American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting. We assembled a dataset containing outcomes of 15,624 articles scheduled to be presented between 2009 and 2012 at the APSA meetings or at a comparator annual conference (that of the Midwest Political Science Association). Our estimates are quantified in difference-in-difference analyses: first using the comparator meetings as a control, then exploiting heterogeneity in a measure of session attendance, within the APSA meetings. We observe significant ‘conference effects’: on average, articles gain 17-26 downloads in the 15 months after being presented in a conference. The effects are larger for papers authored by scholars affiliated to lower tier universities and scholars in the early stages of their career. Our findings are robust to several tests.

Keywords: effects of conferences; diffusion of scientific knowledge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 L38 O39 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ueaeco.github.io/working-papers/papers/cbess/UEA-CBESS-14-08.pdf main text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Role of Conferences on the Pathway to Academic Impact Evidence from a Natural Experiment (2020)
Working Paper: The Role of Conferences on the Pathway to Academic Impact: Evidence from a Natural Experiment (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uea:wcbess:14-08

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Reception, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Cara Liggins ().