Externalities in Knowledge Production: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment
General Economics
2025-03-19 v1 Computers and Society
Computer Science and Game Theory
Economics
Abstract
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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1903.01861,
title = {Externalities in Knowledge Production: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment},
author = {Marit Hinnosaar and Toomas Hinnosaar and Michael Kummer and Olga Slivko},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.01861},
year = {2025}
}