Economists vs Political Scientists on the Web

Ezra Klein wants to know why economists are overrepresented in the blogosphere, while political scientists are nowhere to be found. And even Henry Farrell can't single-handedly make the problem go away. It's deeper than that, and Richard Baldwin, I think, hints at the answer when he notes that economists are discouraged from discussing the policy implications of their work in peer-reviewed journals. As a result, he says, "the discussion of research results that does not take place in the journals has spilled over into cyberspace."

Baldwin is not particularly happy about this: the econoblogosphere, he reckons, operates at a lower level than the discussion sections of learned publications. On the other hand, as Andrew Leonard notes, it essentially offers anybody with an internet connection unfettered access to high-level economics debates at roughly a graduate-seminar level.

Insofar as Leonard and Baldwin disagree, I'm with Leonard. Whatever the economics profession loses from the lack of policy discussions in refereed journals, it more than makes up for in the vibrancy of the inter-blog conversation – which in any case is vastly more effective than any journal in terms of bringing important research to the attention of economists worldwide.

So maybe, if the political science community wants something similar, they would have to stop talking politics in their refereed journals. Which, admittedly, might be hard.

(By the way, a little known fact: Brad Setser, econoblogger extraordinaire, is actually a political scientist by training, rather than an economist: his doctorate is in international relations. Which almost certainly means he's got a better grasp of economic realities than if he'd stayed in economics departments for his whole academic career.)