Conference Presentations and Academic Publishing

We quantify the contribution of conferences to publication success of more than 4,000 papers presented at three leading economics conferences over the 2006-2012 period. We show a positive link between conference presentation and the publishing probability in high-quality journals. Participating in major conferences is also associated with improved metrics for other measures of academic success such as the number of citations or abstract views. While the results are broadly similar across fields, annual meetings of the American Economic Association are particularly valuable in these dimensions. We also find that female authors appear to gain less from conferences than male authors.