reply on: Research in Public #02: Posting fees affect post quantity \ stacker news ~econ

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140 sats \ 15 replies \ @Undisciplined 8 Oct \ on: Research in Public #02: Posting fees affect post quantity econ

You're getting to this in one of your next steps, but as I'm sure you expected I have questions about bias and endogeneity.

It helps that you can show the relationship holds within territories, so we know it's not just some artifact of composition. However, there still are lots of other things going on.

Reverse causality: Some territories might raise their fees because they have low volume but expect that volume to be inelastic. I think this describes what @realBitcoinDog did with ~HealthAndFitness and it's what @jeff was doing with ~econ before he handed it over to me.
Spurious correlation: There may have simply been lower fees when territories were first introduced, which corresponded to a busier time at SN. During the early price discovery process founders were fairly slow to raise fess because no one had any idea what the optimal fees were. Unless somewhat higher fees caused the decline of SN activity (maybe it did!), then this is a problem.
Selection: Territories have different focuses. ~news is geared towards higher volume shorter posts, while ~mostly_harmless is for more thoughtful content. I suspect the intention of the territory is doing work in addition to the fees.

I'm sure we'll both think of more, but that's enough to start with.

Some sort of dif-in-dif design could get at the reverse causality issue.

You might be able to use a relative measure of fees and activity to check the spurious correlation problem.

I bet something as simple as territory fixed effects will take care of the selection issue.

42 sats \ 14 replies \ @SimpleStacker OP 9 Oct

Yeah next up is probably a two way fixed effects regression with time effects and territory effects. Can throw in bitcoin price as a regressor as well.

If, as I'm imagining it, it'll be a territory-by-week panel, there will probably be lots of zeros. I wonder if you know how to efficiently run a tobit model with lots of fixed effects

30 sats \ 13 replies \ @Undisciplined 9 Oct

I'd probably start with the subsample of territories that have posts almost every week.

Have you looked at the distribution of post output by territory? I suspect the territories that have posts every week account for 95%+ of total posts.

I forget exactly when asinh has problems, but it can perform more or less like a log that accepts zeros.

42 sats \ 12 replies \ @realBitcoinDog 9 Oct

Don’t make me raise posting fees to 300 sats for just @denlillaapan

10 sats \ 9 replies \ @Undisciplined 9 Oct

I really think you should consider dropping it. We want people to take part in the immortal community, right?

~Health died because they jacked the fee too high.

42 sats \ 8 replies \ @realBitcoinDog 9 Oct

We’re not doing 1k! U want 100?

0 sats \ 7 replies \ @Undisciplined 9 Oct

What did we start at? Was it 10 or 99 or am I misremembering completely?

42 sats \ 6 replies \ @SimpleStacker OP 9 Oct

data to the rescue? as far as I can tell, ~HealthAndFitness started at about 100, went down to 70, and is now at 200.

30 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 9 Oct

Thanks! I think it was 99, because I remember RBD wanting to use the old marketing trick of sitting just below 100.