Alex Tabarrok
Marginal Revolution
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GMU Blogs
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Marginal Revolution
Café Hayek
EconLog
Overcoming Bias
Coordination Problem and
others
GMU economists also
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Newspapers
Radio
Television
Novels
Rap videos.
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Economics teaches important lessons for human
welfare.
Popular Physics vs.Popular economics
It’s not vital that the public understand black
holes, it is vital that the public understand price
controls.
 Citizens in a democracy need to understand
economics and its lessons.
 Principles of economics the most important
economics class.
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Educating future economists is important but
educating future citizens is even more important.
Teaching not restricted to the
classroom: the world is our
classroom.
 Blogs are an important
communication tool.
 Marginal Revolution among
Top 100 blogs in the world.
 Visitors from all over the
Marginal Revolution, World Visit Map, Oct-Nov, 2011
world.
 We have readers at WSJ, NYTimes, Financial Times, Treasury,
Federal Reserve?
 Similar story for others, e.g. Krugman and Freakonomics.
 The Lesson: Surprising Demand for Economics Knowledge.
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Get to the point.
Bite-sized posts with a little bit of fun.
 Dim Sum for the mind.
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Don’t assume that limited attention span
means limited learning.
 Depth comes in following the conversation,
repeated visits and links.
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Don’t underestimate the audience.
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Be vivid, make every word count.
First sentence from a well-known economics textbook:
The word economy comes from the Greek
word oikonomos, which means “one who
manages a household.”
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First sentence, Modern Principles:
The prisoners were dying of scurvy, typhoid
fever, and smallpox but nothing was killing
them more than bad incentives.
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Prior to ~2008 lots of applied Freakonomics
type material.
Then in 2008 the world went to hell.
Blogs have become the first place for policy
debate and policy development.
Why?
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Fast
 Journal time vs. Real Time.
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Open
 Anyone can enter the conversation.
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Robust
 Debate, discussion and development.
 Facts are important.
 All bugs are shallow with enough eyes.
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Polymath project. Tim Gowers, Fields
Medalist, proposed massive collaboration as
a way to find a new combinatorial proof to
the density version of the Hales–Jewett
theorem.
Problem solved within 6-weeks!
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Scott Sumner and NGDP targeting. From blog to
OMC debate in 3 years.
Gary Gorton and shadow banking.
Housing, finance, monetary, fiscal, structural issues.
Paul Krugman and working out debt transference
problem.
 Back and forth between policy and model.
Brad DeLong, Nick Rowe and others working to
reconcile Fisherian, Wicksellian, Keynesian policy
frameworks.
 Treasury, Federal Reserve and elsewhere.
 Blogs have become especially important for economic
policy.
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Journals reward cleverness.
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Prove that the model works, given the assumptions.
Realism of assumptions doesn’t matter (much).
Application to policy in or two paragraphs at the end.
Can be refereed.
Policy requires wisdom.
 From the 10 models available which are the most relevant?
 Assumptions are critical as is knowing something about
the world. Do the assumptions apply?
 Economic history of great use.
 Constraints of history, psychology, and politics are
importance.
 Hard to referee.
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Economics on the blogs is less about formal
proofs more about combining economics,
politics, psychology, history, and law to make
useful advice.
Need a new term:
The Return of
Political Economy
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Blogging is teaching
 The world is your classroom.
 There is a demand for accessible economics.
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Blogging is learning and researching
 Changes the questions we ask
 Changes acceptable answers
▪ Facts
▪ History
▪ Law
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Blogging is the Return of Political Economy.