Over at Bloomberg View, I gave a quick guide to the econ blogosphere. As expected, I left out some important people. Those would include:
1. Steve Williamson
This was just pure moronitude on my part, since I meant to move him up from the bottom section to the "Macro Geeks" section and then just forgot and left him out entirely! In any case, read his blog, it's good. Also, he's blogging a lot more recently, after a long hiatus, and including a lot of great charts. And he's not talking about Krugman anymore, which is a good thing. ;-)
2. Carola Binder
Another pure mistake on my part. I had meant to put Carola's blog at the bottom and simply forgot. This is especially egregious because she was my chief substitute blogger for half a year! Carola's blog is probably the most similar to my own, I think.
3. Owen Zidar
A great source for paper links. As with Carola, I meant to give him a mention at the bottom and simply forgot.
4. Steve Waldman
Usually a bit too verbose and literary for my tastes, but undeniably an important pillar of the blogosphere.
5. David Glasner
Usually a bit too verbose and literary for my tastes, but undeniably an important pillar of the blogosphere.
6. Nick Bunker
The new kid on the econ blogoblock. Looks excellent so far! Forgot him because he's too new.
7. Bill McBride
I always thought of Calculated Risk as a finance rather than an econ blog, but people on Twitter beg to differ.
8. Mike Konczal
Mike Konczal is awesome. For some reason I thought he wasn't blogging anymore! Then just this morning I saw a great post by him, and I realized I was dangerously wrong.
9. Jeff Smith
Michigan economist Jeff Smith has shaved his Ron Swanson moustache, but has not lost any of his power. He needs to blog more, though. As an expert in applied micro, he could demolish a lot of overhyped studies in the media.
10. Chris House
My old macro sensei blogs very occasionally. He hasn't blogged since October of last year! But hopefully he will return soon...
11. Frances Coppola
Frances has moved a lot of her blogging to Forbes (like I moved to BV), but still maintains a personal blog as well.
12. Crooked Timber
A great eclectic blog that occasionally does blog about economics.
13. Timothy Taylor
If you are new to econ, you should probably start with Tim Taylor. If you're not new to econ, you should still read his blog.
14. Kevin Grier and Michael Munger
How could I leave out Kids Prefer Cheese??? GET TO THE CHEDDAR!
I'm sure this list will grow as people keep reminding me of blogs I forgot to include...
I am sometimes under the impression that Williamson is just trolling everyone with math for his personal amusement. He often has a sarcastic tone and when I dig into the equations a bit (which I admit are a bit over my head) it seems they are not wrong but that they focus on unimportant details or are interpreted with inverted common sense causal relations.
ReplyDeleteYou mean the Fisher Equation?
DeleteNot the first time in my life I've been misunderstood. I'm actually dead serious most of the time, though occasionally I'm having a good chuckle too. Some of what I discuss I'm just doing in an alternative venue from what I usually do, and I find it useful to write it down in a different way and get some response to it. If there's some math in there, that's to show people that I'm not making it up. These are not "unimportant details" or "inverted common sense" but ideas that can be made precise in mathematical terms, which is how we do it in practice.
DeleteHey there, thought I'd share a few more blogs which I think might be worth following.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, you left out Chris Dillow! That's understandable perhaps, as he's much more well known in British circles than in the US, still a worthwhile read sometimes. Leaning: centre left - http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com
Speaking of British bloggers, there's also Jonathan Portes, he used to have his own blog but then moved to the niesr, I don't know how to filter it so that it only shows his posts, so here is his profile page: http://niesr.ac.uk/users/portes-j
Daniel Kuehn is a great blogger, I think some of his posts are well worth reading for econonerds:
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.co.uk/
Does Dean Baker's beat the press count? Or is that too famous:
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/beat-the-press/
There's also some post-Keynesian or 'monetary realist' ( :/ ) blogs which might be worth reading:
http://pragcap.com/
http://monetaryrealism.com/
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.co.uk/
Here's some others which may or may not be interesting:
https://everydayecon.wordpress.com/
http://baselinescenario.com/
http://www.freebanking.org/author/selgin/
http://economicsofcontempt.blogspot.co.uk/ (no longer updated but used to be pretty impressive)
http://falkenblog.blogspot.co.uk/ (mainly investing stuff but often has some interesting more broad perspectives, leans to the right)
Oh, almost forgot. Another excellent blog:
Deletehttp://coppolacomment.blogspot.co.uk/
Not an economist as far as I know although she has a background in finance. Seems very knowledgeable.
Britonomist, I believe JP Koning's blog should be included--he's the best by far on monetary history (from medieval times right up to cryptocurrency). His monetary parables are also very good at translating Glasner, Sumner, and Rowe into comprehensible English for non-specialists like myself. As a bonus, his images, included with every post, are well-chosen and aesthetically pleasing.
Deletejpkoning.blogspot.com
Thanks, Noah!
ReplyDeleteJeff Ely doesn't blog much anymore but cheaptalk.org is the funniest micro theory blog around.
ReplyDeleteNot a professional economist, seems to be self taught and probably more a finance man, but Doug Short has useful monthly updates on employment and other macro issues. He seems to be non-partisan and just does the numbers. The posts have excellent graphs and charts which are very immediate in illustrating his points.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/
http://mungowitzend.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteBtw, isn't Slate Star Codex (Scott Alexander) the latest boy wonder blogger? His topics range a lot wider than econ, but Bryan Caplan and Scott Sumner love him (despite SSC's progressive slant).
ReplyDeletehttp://slatestarcodex.com/
He's too wordy for me, however, and the comments are a post-apocalyptic horror show.
economic populist: http://www.economicpopulist.org/
ReplyDeleteSteven Landsburg? http://www.thebigquestions.com/blog/
ReplyDeleteAlthough he seems to be on a hiatus right now. His blog posts are sharply divided into three categories: sarcastic libertarian commentary (my least favorite, especially when he is taking potshots at Krugman), extraordinarily well-explained posts about math for the non-math major, and economic insight.
Have you any read russian economic blogs?) It's very interesting too. These three blogs are best:
ReplyDeletezhu-s.livejournal.com
kar-barabas.livejournal.com
ugfx.livejournal.com
Best regards from Russia
Australian MMT blogger - http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/
ReplyDeleteIs it?)
William Hummel - http://wfhummel.cnchost.com/
ReplyDeleteall about monetary theory)
Frances Coppola, Crooked Timber and Antonio Fatas are my favourites that you missed.
ReplyDeleteI think you should have included Bill McBride and Gavyn Davies in your top list and cut Cochrane and Sumner. Tyler Cowen's the only good classical liberal econblogger. Mankiw's okay to throw in but who really reads him.
ReplyDeleteKarl Whelan is obligatory if you're trying to follow Europe especially the ECB.
FTAlphaville is a decent aggregator, and Matt sometimes figures things out.
With Cochrane I guess it's the academic rep. Same reason he gets space in the WSJ. You shredded that one showing exactly what's wrong with him - he's just not that bright. His latest brilliant idea was that Greece could solve its eternal austerity-or-Grexit dilemma by paying bills with IOUs and accepting them as taxes. He thought accepting them for tax would make them trade at close to the value of the euro. Really.
Sumner is very popular, but ridiculous. There's just no way to make sense of anti-Keynesian NGDP targeting, or any reason to waste time reading about velocity in the age of QE.
Cochrane's "not that bright" huh? I think I have an alternative interpretation of the issue here.
ReplyDeleteOkay, explain for us all here how that WSJ piece was a really powerful and convincing take-down of the Keynesians (I'm usually critical of Keynesians and I thought it was really lame). And explain how his Greek IOU plan wouldn't chase all the euros out of Greece and turn into a separate currency. Go on, do your best.
DeleteOf course he's bright. He also writes some demagogic stuff.
DeleteI don't have the time, space, or inclination to address the WSJ op-ed, but it was better than critics are claiming. As for the Greek IOU plan, turning them into a separate currency is EXACTLY the point; and Cochrane admits as much. It certainly wouldn't "chase all the Euros out of Greece," as you suggest. It'd be more of a bridge currency, albeit financed with a payday loan.
DeleteCochrane claimed that an IOU accepted for taxes could serve as a parallel currency while retaining the euro as the main currency. And that is indeed more evidence that he's not very bright, as what would obviously happen is that people would use pseudo-euros to pay taxes and euros for private payments. Think it through and you should figure out why the euro supply would either dwindle or disappear quickly, depending on the pace of capital flight.
DeleteI'm sure there's a lot more euro banknotes floating around Greece, but there were only €5.4b euros held by the Greek banking system at the end of December. Those recent ELA limit increases were essentially sending new euros to the Greek banking system as its supplies were nearing zero. It's very easy for a euro member to be drained of euros, they can exit via interbank transfer. Not at all like a national currency where only banknotes can leave the country.
If noted and eminent scholar Tom Warner says John Cochrane isn't bright, it must be true. After all, Tom Warner has done so many important things and written so many influential articles. Or, perhaps not.
DeleteI actually wasn't surprised landsburg wasn't included. I've always had a feeling Noah wasn't a big fan of landsburg's. Landsburg is somewhat of a generalist , but I've always found him interesting. I do think he soemtimes views the real world (at least in his blog posts) a bit too constrained to his models, but at least he tries
ReplyDeleteto be clear and honest about why he thinks what he thinks. He certainly is an honest economist.
I really do not like Landsburg.
DeleteI always forget that you're over at BV, Noah. These links back to, or expansions of, your BV columns are like welcome little un-retirements!
ReplyDeleteNoah,
ReplyDeleteyou missed as I call it Vox wonk.
always worth a read. Just like you.