I’ve added an econoblogroll to this site to show what I’ve been reading on the topic for the past few months. As I am an amateur with regard to economics and finance, I am deeply indebted to the insights and knowledge I’ve gained by following some of these blogs. I hope more people will take an interest.
If you have no background in economics and are looking for something fairly light and fun [I think I meant interesting and quirky], start with the Freakonomics blog. If you’re interested in economics with psychology (i.e. weird facts about ‘the strange things people do’), Nudge and Predictably Irrational are two book-driven blogs in the hot field of behavioural economics. Check out Tim Harford too.
Turning to more urgent matters, if I had to choose one source for financial crisis news it would be Felix Salmon at Portfolio, who’s usually up-to-the-minute with insightful commentary, along with plenty of relevant links and a sense of humour.
Another good pick if you had to choose one blog is Free Exchange at The Economist’s website, which is more like a conventional editorial column, published frequently throughout the day, with at least one post summarizing and linking to some of the day’s essential reading from around the web.
To understand the current phase of the crisis more deeply, Arnold Kling at EconLog is who you should look to. (Among other notable qualifications, Kling used to work at Freddie Mac.) Best place to start if you’re new is his recent diavlog with Will Wilkinson and this earlier podcast. Here’s one of his more interesting current feelings:
Think of the mortgage securities market as a poker game being played on a ship. The game is grinding to a halt, because so many players have lost most of their chips. So they come out on deck and shout, “Emergency! Emergency! The ship is about to sink! Everybody needs to give the ship’s Bursar authority to play poker, using money from the ship’s vault!”
For someone less academic (though not necessarily less insightful) Megan McArdle at The Atlantic is among the most entertaining econobloggers to read, and has made some good points in the past couple of weeks.
Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution deserves to be mentioned early, as he is more generally my favourite econoblogger and intellectual omnivore. In terms of the financial crisis, Cowen has mostly deferred to the more relevant expertise of specialists like Kling, but he has made some excellent points, like this.
Then of course there’s Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist. He’s not one of my go-to economists (nor columnists) but he’s a polarizing figure who is always nearby whenever there’s a big debate (Krugman made a name for himself bashing Bush back when W and his policies were still quite popular) and you can’t ignore him.
Greg Mankiw, a former Bush advisor who now teaches intro economics at Harvard is another top econoblogger. His blog is perhaps the best for students and wannabe students of the discipline. (This post just pointed me to this excellent article by Robert Shiller – who if you had to pin me down, I’d say is tops on my list of economists. I wish he had a blog, or at least a feed, so I could get updates on all his writing, instead of stumbling onto it via others.)
I think Paul Kedrosky is one of the more underrated econobloggers. He’s often the first one in my feed list to link to a breaking story, and he consistently finds bits of information that are timely and interesting to non-economists (e.g. most recently informing us that the Bush administration has moved into the #2 spot on the list of “worst financially-performing presidencies in U.S. history”).
Another underrated favourite of mine is Economic Principals, an “independent weekly” column by David Warsh, who is a good at telling stories and weaving book reviews, intellectual trends, and historical narratives into his articles.
Daniel Drezner is an economics-oriented political scientist, and fast becoming one of my most favourite bloggers. His bit on Sarah Palin getting an endorsement from her parents is hilarious, and a point he made in a recent post is absolutely essential for thinking about the crisis:
… here’s the thing — no one gets credit for stopping a meltdown if it doesn’t happen. To use a security analogy, think about what would have happened if either the Bush or Clinton administrations had killed the leadership of Al Qaeda and the Taliban prior to June of 2001. Even if they had claimed that they were foiling a terrorist plot against the United States, no one would have known about it, and it would have been pretty easy to attack either administration for belligerent unilateralism. In other words, it was only after 9/11 that the American public was ready to take the actions that would have prevented 9/11.
It’s a point also made by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in The Black Swan, which you must read.
Overcoming Bias is another favourite – though resident economist there, Robin Hanson, hasn’t said quite as much about the financial crisis as other bloggers I’ve mentioned.
Rounding out my reading list, Mark Thoma at Economist’s View has always struck me as more of an economists’ economist who doesn’t have much to say to amateurs like me, but the crisis has brought some good posts from him and I’ll continue watching for more. Brad DeLong also catches my attention (a few times per day) — though perhaps largely because of his many, many posts dissing McCain.
There’s much, much more out there. These are just a few of the economics blogs I happened to have stumbled into (mostly via Marginal Revolution, I’ll admit). Please continue to explore, comment, link and refer.
[Oh, I forgot about my latest addition, Worthwhile Canadian Initiative. Excellent to find more Canadian content.]
