Rolling On About Blogs

Even though Dean Baker and I are both “liberal Democrats” (he more than I, I think, or at least he’s more loyal), I seem to disagree with him more often than I agree with him. Nonetheless, I am quite impressed with his blog. I’m something of an academic snob when it comes to economics blogs: that is, I’m hesitant to “waste my time” on any blog that isn’t written by someone with the title “Professor”. (For example, you’d have a hell of a time getting me to read my own blog – at least until I realized how smart the author is:) However, I find that Dean Baker makes up in provocative thought for what he lacks either in academic credentials or in agreeing with me.

Other non-academic blogs that I like: Economics Unbound (Michael Mandel of Business Week), Brad Setser (international finance; not an easy read, but he clearly knows his stuff better than most), Battlepanda (Angelica Oung, though lately she seems to be leaving it mostly to her co-bloggers). That last one is kind of an outlier in my blog space: as far as I know, Angelica doesn’t even have an advanced degree, much less an academic appointment, but I like her writing, and her perspective seems unique. (I could say that Angelica is my link into the lefty/feminist/youth blogosphere, but she seems rather to the right among the lefties.)

Now that I’ve mentioned the non-academics, I should be true to my snobbery and give the prominent final position to the academics. Brad DeLong and Greg Mankiw are the acknowledged kings, and they provide a nice political counterpoint to each other. Also excellent are Econbrowser (James Hamilton, the energy macroeconomics and time series analysis expert, with Menzie Chinn, who writes mostly about international finance issues), Economist’s View (Mark Thoma, University of Oregon, leaning left but more faithful to economic analysis than many on the left), macroblog (David Altig of the Cleveland Fed and the University of Chicago), and EconLog (Arnold Kling and Bryan Caplan, who lean right/libertarian). [A few others that I have to mention: William Polley (academic; interesting but not prolific); New Economist (academic?? I don’t know, but many of the posts certainly are); Angry Bear (distinctly left-leaning and often more about politics than economics; academic?? Again I don’t know). As for Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok), being a macro guy, I seldom read it, but everyone else seems to.]