Externalities in Knowledge Production: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

• Tác giả: Marit Hinnosaar, Toomas Hinnosaar, Michael Kummer, Olga Slivko
• Ngôn ngữ: eng
• Ký hiệu phân loại: 306.42 *Sociology of knowledge
• Thông tin xuất bản: 2019
• Bộ sưu tập: Metadata
• ID: 162681

Tóm tắt

Are there positive or negative externalities in knowledge production? Do current contributions to knowledge production increase or decrease the future growth of knowledge? We use a randomized field experiment, which added relevant content to some pages in Wikipedia while leaving similar pages unchanged. We find that the addition of content has a negligible impact on the subsequent long-run growth of content. Our results have implications for information seeding and incentivizing contributions, implying that additional content does not generate sizable externalities by inspiring nor discouraging future contributions.