The Top 5 Economic/Finance Blogs and how I Stay Current

tl;dr: See the list of five blogs below and use Google Reader*

 

News travels fast, and on the Internet, it travels even faster. Along for the ride is the commentary and analysis that goes along with the news. There is a small, but growing portion of the Internet that is devoted to all things Economic/Finance. The most lively part involves the economic/finance blogs; they often link to each other and challenge ideas with meaningful discussion. Here are the top 5 (in no particular order) that I believe are worth your time:

 

1. Free Exchange is hosted by The Economist and provides an economic outlook on the news. The correspondents from The Economist often take a critical look at what is happening around the world and converse about the implications. The best part is how the authors often pull in discussion from all over the internet and offer a wide perspective. Even the comments are often insightful, instead of everyone just posting “First!”

 

Great example: http://econ.st/esHgZm

 

2. Marginal Revolution is a blog managed by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, both professors at George Mason University. This blog covers a wide range of topics, and sometimes you may not care about the topic (when one of the authors travels to Costa Rica, I tend not to care), but the blog always tends to surprise me at least a few times a week. At the very least, the common post  of “Assorted links” tends to provide some excellent timely articles from around the Internet.

 

Great example: http://bit.ly/hiGFor

 

3. Greg Mankiw’s Blog is where Greg Mankiw posts his thoughts and often links to interesting parts of the Internet. I don’t have a recent great example, but he often uses his blog to share interesting econ related items with current and past students. He often has a little fun on his website as well. Yoram Bauman, PhD is a economist who is also a comedian; he poked some fun at G. Mankiw by using  Mankiw’s top 10 principles of economics as a basis for a comedy skit. Mankiw not only approved, but links to the video from his site.

 

Homepage: http://bit.ly/gynlgi

 

4. Freakonomics started as a book by Steven Levitt and Stehpen Dubner, but has grown into a second book, Super Freakonomics, a radio podcast, a movie, and a blog. Both Levitt and Dubner contribute to their blog, and they also invite several other bloggers write about interesting topics. They used to be hosted at the NYTimes, but since the newspaper instituted a paywall, they have moved to their own site. The authors at the site tend to apply economic theory to topics we generally don’t associate with economics. The example post examines the unintended consequences from polio eradication in India.  

 

Great example: http://bit.ly/fF8UsD

 

5. Economix at the NYTimes has rose quickly through the blogging ranks with quality bloggers writing about interesting topics. The example examines the difference between male and female unpaid work in several countries.

 

Great example: http://nyti.ms/g7wdFc

 

^Bonus^

“MV=PQ: A Resource for Economic Educators” posts some interesting information/media.

They recently posted about a video that uses house prices from 1890-2010 visualized as a roller coaster.

 

http://bit.ly/i6Ekmr

 

So, those are six blogs that are often worth reading. But it is hard to keep up with blogs. Either you check them too often and waste time or not often enough and miss posts. The best solution is to use a feed reader to organize the posts from blogs you follow. Because I’ve already typed enough for a wall of text, I will leave you with this great video to explain how to use feed readers to organize your consumption of information.

 

http://bit.ly/hfIDNU

 

As always, feedback is a gift. Please feel  free to email me your thoughts about this post, the blogs, or Google Reader.

 

*tl;dr is short for “too long; didn’t read” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long;_didn't_read

 

Andrew Zumwalt, M.S.

Director of the MoTax Education Initiative

162 Stanley Hall

University of Missouri

Columbia MO 65211

Google Voice #: 573-234-4268

Fax: 573-884-5768