Innovation Conference

On Friday, the "real" economists came to present their research. Many of these papers are well done or interesting (and a few are both). However, I must say, I think I liked the "students' sessions" better. There may have been a slight quality difference, but they appear to be much more willing to engage in discussion about the topic and not convince themselves that their findings are the definitive "truth." Perhaps the academic economists' papers are substantially better, but my expectations were higher still. Or, perhaps, after five days of hearing papers on the economics of innovation, I am burned out on the topic. Some of these seem to be asking many of the same questions or using the same data from different countries. Or, perhaps, one bad apple spoiled the bunch (see below).

There are a few "big wigs" at all conferences. Most papers are presented in parallel sessions but the big timers will usually get the whole conference attendance as an audience. Most of the time, this is efficient because the big timers usually got that way because they are smart, hardworking and have access to data, resources and good RAs. For example, at the Milan conference, the talks by Dixit, Sutton and Anderson were all excellent and substantially increased the value added of the conference. Most of us look forward to hearing what the smart, industrious, and resourceful people in our field have to say.

However, without mentioning names, I had to walk out on one big timer at this conference. First, the presentation was technically poor (too many duplicative slides, poorly prepared slides, main points made verbally and not mentioned in slides, bad speaking voice & too many digressions). I can tolerate some of this as many of us are offenders. Second, and worse, the talk was on a policy issue and the speaker was obviously sympathetic of one-side and dismissive of the other side. OK, so I know your priors, what is your evidence? Oh, you only measure costs and not benefits. It appears as though the big timer is saying, because of my stature, you can trust my claims even when they are not supported by evidence. Sorry, I got better things to do than to be patronized.

The upside is that I got some work done (see, opportunity cost was positive). I think I found a work-around for my large file size problem.

Work Progress 3/5