Saturday, January 1, 2011

Another year of blogging

How quickly that year passed, and I am once more amazed at the quantity I have posted. One hardly notices when you write a couple of paragraphs each day, but it sure accumulates: 271 posts during the year, 40 more than the previous year, reflecting the lack of vacation time...

Should I continue? I still like doing it, even though it takes much more time to write even two paragraphs about a paper than simply reading it. While I do not have credible statistics to back it up, I have the impression that I have a rather loyal (and mostly silent) readership. There are over 700 subscribers on the Google Reader I use, probably more elsewhere and through various relays. I only wish there were more discussions, although I understand it can be difficult to participate.

Comments averaged at two a post, a rather modest number. But some posts attracted a lively discussion. Here are the ones with the most comments:
  1. Why criticize modern macro when you do not follow modern macro?
  2. The economics of compartments
  3. On the dangers of penny auctions, an example
  4. Is democracy really worth it?
  5. About this obsession with lawns
  6. Doing Calvo all wrong
  7. About the state of US higher education
  8. Smoking bans versus tobacco taxation

And which were the most popular posts of the year?
  1. The economics of compartments
  2. Worker overconfidence and unemployment duration
  3. What is an MBA worth? (from 2008!)
  4. How to increase employment, and at what cost (from 2009)
  5. On the dangers of penny auctions, an example
  6. Is the US a third world country?
  7. Posting calories in restaurants is Pareto improving
  8. The AEA is missing a golden opportunity
  9. The problem with experimental economics: people are weird
  10. Household size heterogeneity and the representative agent

Anyway, here come another year of blogging on research in Economics.

5 comments:

mOOm said...

700 is a substantial number for subscribers. Why don't you set up Google Analytics and be able to track all visits. Is this what you already have:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home

If not, I recommend it for tracking subscribers.

Vilfredo said...

I am also impressed by the number of subscribers, and how it implies that the proportion that comments is tiny.

Anonymous said...

To answer your question, yes, please do continue. I'm one of the mostly silent readers who greatly enjoys reading about the economist's way of looking at things, and you do an excellent job of this.

BTW, why not put a few Google AdSense ads on your pages? With the traffic you see, you'll pick up a couple of thousand dollars a year I'd guess.

Anonymous said...

... let me correct myself - why don't you put a few Google AdSense ads on your page in a place where people will see them? :-) I've been reading for six months or so, and just today noticed that you do indeed have a couple of ads in places where they're practically invisible.

Economic Logician said...

I had Google ads in the sidebar until recently. I deleted them because they took a lot of space for virtually no income. Nobody was clicking on them.