I have a few thoughts.
Thinking financially here: while I'm not aware of studies, the rise of Wikipedia coincided with the demise of Encarta. Also, I think that you'd want to take into consideration the impacts that Wikipedia has had via its appearance in Google search results and in Google's information summary panels; I'm sure that Google has reaped substantial financial benefits from Wikipedia. (This is a mixed blessing.) You might consider making an estimate of how many millions of dollars university and school libraries have saved by not purchasing proprietary encyclopedias.
You might consult with WikiProject Medicine and WPMF to learn about the public health impacts of their efforts in content development and translation efforts, which they seem to think have been substantial in the developing world.
I believe that the education folks in WMF and WEF have done some analyses of how Wikipedia assignments have may have yielded improved student engagement with material than traditional course assignments.
There are probably also financial benefits that others have reaped from using open source MediaWiki software. Perhaps the folks in WMF Tech would be able to provide some analysis of the benefits of MediaWiki to external organizations.
HTH,
Pine
On Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 2:19 PM, Aaron Halfaker ahalfaker@wikimedia.org wrote:
Wikipedia has probably had some substantial external impacts. Are there any studies quantifying them? Maybe increased scientific literacy? Or maybe GDP rises with access to Wikipedia?
Are there any studies that have explored how Wikipedia has affected economic or social issues?
I'm looking for any references you've got.
-Aaron
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