Discussants

In: Research Policy, Vol. 51, Issue 10, 2022, 104587

Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 20-19

57 Pages Posted: 11 Nov 2020 Last revised: 29 Jun 2022

See all articles by Michael E. Rose

Michael E. Rose

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition

Daniel C. Opolot

University of Cape Town (UCT)

Co-Pierre Georg

Frankfurt School of Finance & Management

Date Written: November 9, 2020

Abstract

We study the role of informal collaboration in academic knowledge production. Our focus is on published papers presented at similar workshops at the NBER Summer Institutes. Though not random, our setting is conducive to studying the role of informal collaboration in academic knowledge production. Papers are of comparable quality and the workshops are otherwise similar. Even among a set of papers that is highly selected on expected quality, discussants matter for top journal publication. Conditional on having a discussant, a paper’s citation count increases in the discussant’s prolificness. Our findings support the existence of quality-improving channels through which discussants improve the inherent quality of a paper. Conversely, using social network analysis we rule out a diffusion channel through which citations accumulate because discussants diffuse information about the paper within their social network.

Keywords: Informal collaboration, academic production function, NBER Summer Institutes

JEL Classification: A14, D83, L30, 031, O33, O34

Suggested Citation

Rose, Michael and Opolot, Daniel C. and Georg, Co-Pierre, Discussants (November 9, 2020). In: Research Policy, Vol. 51, Issue 10, 2022, 104587, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 20-19, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3727173 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3727173

Michael Rose (Contact Author)

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition ( email )

Marstallplatz 1
Munich, Bayern 80539
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.ip.mpg.de/en/persons/rose-michael.html

Daniel C. Opolot

University of Cape Town (UCT) ( email )

3rd Floor, leslie Commerce Building
Engineering Mall, Upper Campus
Cape Town, Western Cape 8000
South Africa

HOME PAGE: http://https://opolotdaniel.github.io/

Co-Pierre Georg

Frankfurt School of Finance & Management ( email )

Adickesallee 32-34
Frankfurt am Main, 60322
Germany

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