Great reasons to post your working papers online

From the RePEc blog:

RePEc carries research in various formats. While journal articles are unique (with very few exceptions), working papers, as they are pre-prints, may be duplicates of listed articles, and they may even appear in different versions, either because they are published in different series, or because there may be updates within a series. We believe that is important to carry all versions, not just the last one, for the following reasons.

1. Time-stamps: A working paper allows to establish when some research was conducted and thus determines preeminence of research ideas. Given publication delays in Economics, this can be important.
   
2. Open access: Many journal articles have gated access. Such restrictions can be bypassed by reading working papers, which are mostly open access.
   
3. Link to published version: It is still preferred to use published versions in citations, especially once a paper is accepted in a journal. The originally cited working paper is often linked to its published version.
   
4. Visibility: Working papers are much more read than journal articles, both because they are more current and they are freely available. In addition, working papers are disseminated through NEP.

Appstate working papers can be found here: http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/aplwpaper/.