Thread by @SteveCicala

I'm glad to see a discussion of the culture in economics seminars. A little history (and possibly folklore) on how we got here: Why "We don't clap."

The possible folklore part is that the modern economics seminar format has its roots at @UChi_Economics. At least that's what people there say. They weren't seminars, they were workshops.

The difference is that in a workshop all participants were expected to have read the paper.

It wasn't a presentation, it was a discussion of a paper that everyone had read. Imagine everyone participating in a 90 min discussion, giving the author feedback on their paper and then clapping at the end. Clapping for whom?

I went to my first economics seminars toward the end of undergrad, and a weird equilibrium had already settled in. Many places had already abandoned reading in advance, and most speakers came in with slides to present their papers.

So you had a speaker trying to present, and an audience trying to discuss. There was some enforcement of reading norms: Becker would call out people who asked questions that reflected they hadn't read the paper. The best talks were ones that largely ignored the slide deck.

Over time, that enforcement lagged and eventually quietly disappeared altogether. But there was no proclamation and deliberate redesign to reflect the fact that the audience was basically ignorant of the paper to be presented. But participation norms were not updated accordingly.

The worst seminars now feature Loud Guy who hasn't read the paper trying to engage with the speaker like Becker would because those were the days, both a frustrated speaker and audience, and no clapping at the end.

Reader, I assure you, Loud Guy is no Gary Becker.

It's super-weird to outsiders--usually one person will start clapping at the end, and quickly blush. "Why don't you guys clap?"

"I don't know, we don't clap." Is the usual informed explanation.

I focus on the clapping not because I think everyone deserves a medal and we've all gone soft. It's because there actually *was* a reason not to clap, that reason is gone, but everyone still thinks that this is the way it's *supposed* to be. It's absolutely not.

So I'm glad to see a groundswell of support for examining the culture of economics seminars. Even the ones that are not complete dumpster fires are not well-designed to maximize their objective: to disseminate and improve research.

I don't have a grand plan, I just want to point out that our current system has gone quite far off course from its original design, and there is no appeal to `tradition' to defend it.

I'm very much in favor of deliberate experimentation to come up with a better econ seminar.