Luís Cabral, NYU Stern School of Business
Luís Cabral, NYU Stern School of Business
What Makes Geeks Tick? A Study of Stack Overflow Careers
What Makes Geeks Tick? A Study of Stack Overflow Careers
Abstract: Many online platforms rely on users to voluntarily provide content. What motivates users to con-tribute content for free however is not well understood. In this paper, we use a revealed preference approach to show that career concerns play an important role in user contributions to Stack Overflow,the largest online Q&A community. We investigate how activities that can enhance a user’s reputation vary before and after the user finds a new job. We contrast this with activities that do not improve a user’s reputation. After finding a new job, users contribute 23.7% less in reputation-generating activity. By contrast, they reduce their non-reputation-generating activity by only 7.4% after finding a new job. These findings suggest that users contribute to Stack Overflow in part because they perceive this as a way to improve future employment prospects. We provide direct evidence against alternative explanations such as integer constraints, skills mismatch, and dynamic selection effects.
Full paper available here.
Bio: Luís Cabral is currently the Paganelli-Bull Professor of Economics and International Business at NYU’s Stern School of Business, as well as Chair of the Economics Department. A native of Portugal, he graduated from Stanford University (PhD, Economics, 1989) and taught at the London Business School, Berkeley, Yale, NYU and IESE. Cabral’s research is focused on the dynamics of firm competition, both from the antitrust and from the strategy perspectives. His research topics include reputation, learning, network effects, sunk costs, innovation, strategic risk choice. In addition to numerous journal articles, he is the author of Introduction to Industrial Organization, a textbook translated and adopted by universities in dozens of countries worldwide. He consulted with a variety of organizations (firms, universities, governments, tax and law enforcement agencies, even sports teams) on a variety of economics issues. He was a leading expert witness in the Airbus-Boeing WTO disputes. From 2004-2009, he was a member of European Commission President Barroso’s Group of Economic Policy Analysis (a group of 12 members).
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