Information accessibility and knowledge creation: the impact of Google’s withdrawal from China on scientific research
利用谷歌突然退出中国大陆这一外生冲击，研究发现经济学者的科研产出数量下降约28%，引用量下降约30%，表明信息可及性对科学进步至关重要。
How important is Google for scientific research? This paper exploits the exogenous shock represented by Google’s sudden withdrawal of its services from mainland China to assess the importance of access to information for the knowledge production function of scientific scholars in the field of economics. For economists, a type of scholar with a simple knowledge production function, results from difference-in-difference analyses, which compare their scientific output to scholars located in the neighbouring regions, show that the scientific productivity declines by about 28% in volume and 30% in terms of citations. These results are consistent with the view that information accessibility is an important driver of scientific progress. Considering that the negative effect of the shock is stronger for top scholars located in China, Google’s sudden exit bears the risk that researchers lose touch with the research frontier and persistently lag behind their foreign peers.