The Role of Conferences on the Pathway to Academic Impact

Notes: Observations are at the article level. In Panel A, “three years after” refers to 39 months after the 2012 conference dates. This panel uses the full paper sample (with all of the MPSA papers). In Panel B, “two years after” and “four years after” refer to 24 and 48 months after the 2012 conference dates. This panel uses the main paper sample (with 20 percent of the MPSA papers). The Google Scholar search is explained in Section III.B.4. When considering the first three Google Scholar hits, citation counts are used from the first paper, if there are any, among the first three hits that match (by criteria explained in the Section III.B.4) in title and authorship with the conference paper. When considering the first ten Google Scholar hits, we used the first such paper among the first ten hits.

↵Notes: Observations are at the article level, and outcomes are recorded “three years after” the 2012 conference dates. Columns 1 and 2 use the full paper sample (with all of the MPSA papers), but exclude papers that accumulated more than 500 downloads. Column 3 uses the corresponding matched sample (explained in Section III.B.3 and described in Table A2). Each entry in Columns 1, 2, and 3 represents an estimate for the 2012 APSA coefficient from a separate regression. All regressions include controls for an indicator for whether the paper is in an APSA meeting, conference year dummies, and an APSA specific year trend. Regressions in Columns 2 and 3 also include covariates for the number of authors in the paper, the total number of publications by the article authors multiplied by the average journal impact factor, an indicator for whether any author had a previous paper posted in SSRN, and affiliation dummies (using the highest ranking affiliation among the article authors). Robust standard errors are in brackets. *p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01.1.

↵Notes: Outcomes are recorded “two years after” the 2012 conference dates and consider the first three Google Scholar hits. Each entry represents an estimate for the 2012 APSA meeting coefficient from a separate regression, using the main article sample. Observations are at the article–author level in Rows 3 and 6 and at the article level in the remaining rows. All regressions include controls for an indicator for whether the paper is in an APSA meeting, conference year dummies, and an APSA specific year trend. Article covariates include the number of authors in the paper, the total number of publications by the article authors multiplied by the average journal impact factor, and an indicator for whether any author had a previous paper posted in SSRN. The matched sample is explained in Section III.B.3 and described in Table A2. Robust standard errors are in brackets. *p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01.

↵Notes: Outcomes are recorded “four years after” the 2012 conference dates and consider the first ten Google Scholar hits. Each entry represents an estimate for the 2012 APSA meeting coefficient from a separate regression, using the main article sample. Observations are at the article–author level in Rows 3 and 6, and at the article level in the remaining rows. All regressions include controls for an indicator for whether the paper is in an APSA meeting, conference year dummies, and an APSA specific year trend. Article covariates include the number of authors in the paper, the total number of publications by the article authors multiplied by the average journal impact factor, and an indicator for whether any author had a previous paper posted in SSRN. The matched sample is explained in Section III.B.3 and described in Table A2. Robust standard errors are in brackets. *p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01.

↵Notes: Observations are at the article level in Column 1 and at the article-author level in Column 2. Outcomes are recorded “4 years after” after the 2012 conference dates, and consider the first 10 Google Scholar hits. (The analogous results considering the first 3 hits are reported in Table A7.) All regressions include controls for an indicator for whether the paper is in an APSA meeting, conference-year dummies, an APSA specific year trend, covariates for the number of authors in the paper and for the total number of publications by the article authors multiplied by the average journal impact factor, and an indicator for whether any author had a previous paper posted in SSRN. Regressions reported in Column 1 also include covariates for author-affiliation dummies (using the highest-ranking affiliation among the article authors). Regressions reported in Column 2 also include covariates for author-fixed effects. Robust standard errors are in brackets. *p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01.

↵Notes: Observations are at article–author level and are recorded “four years after” after the 2012 conference dates. Each column in each panel provides estimates for the 2012 APSA meeting from a separate regression. Indicators (i) “author_disc_chair_star,” (ii) “disc_chair_star,” (iii) “author_chair_star,” and (iv) “norole_star,” respectively, denote articles in a session in which star academics: (i) are assigned as a chair/discussant and as an author of a paper, (ii) are assigned only as a chair/discussant, (iii) are assigned only as an author of a paper, or (iv) are assigned no role. Regressions in Panel A include controls for an indicator for whether the paper is in an APSA meeting, conference year dummies, an APSA specific year trend, covariates for the number of authors in the paper and for the total number of publications by the article authors multiplied by the average journal impact factor, an indicator for whether any author had a previous paper posted in SSRN, and author fixed effects. Regressions in Panel B include an indicator for whether the paper is in an APSA meeting, conference year dummies, four indicators for session type, four APSA-session-type specific year trends, an indicator for whether the article is authored by a star academic, covariates for the number of authors in the paper and for the total number of publications by the article authors multiplied by the average journal impact factor, an indicator for whether any author had a previous paper posted in SSRN, and author fixed effects. Robust standard errors are in brackets. *p < 0.1, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01.