Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Going back.

A lot of these are links I've been saving for when I had time to blog about them. So... well, here they are.

A couple of economists at the University of Bristol give some recommendations for econoblogging. If you're interested in picking it up, you may want to read this as a basic guide. A Guide to Blogging in Economics

On the same train of thought, a Canadian economist talks about the value of econoblogging. I think as economies become more dependent on each other, and as they are encountered with global shocks and changes, public knowledge of what's going on, why it's going on, and what the effects are become more important. If economists claim to have a roughly decent idea of what ideal economies looks like, we should make an effort to drive the public in that direction. Even if we can't be forecasters, if we know that more open trade policies lead to greader global growth, we should have a venue to try to convince the public of that. And, if what we believe really is true, we should be able to convincingly argue our points.

Tyler Cowen remarked (some time ago, admittedly, that an economist book club would be good, and that there would be discussion on Keynes's General Theory, section by section. It seemed like a good idea, though I don't know what's come of it. Others seemed to think it was a good idea at the time.Again


Recession Announcements (the official ones, from the NBER):

Many others were talking about this, of course, even though it was really not a surprise to anyone, and hardly even news. I don't remember if I linked this article before, but here's a Business Week piece on why it takes so long to official call a recession.

I find news about other economies interesting, in particular when different economies interact. Edward Hugh at Bonobo Land is an interesting source of economic analysis of different countries. I've also been reading a bit about Spain in particular, so I found this piece of Edward's interesting. Lawrence Lux comments on the same blog post.

This bailout comic is, I think, more poignant today than it was when it was first published. And, it relates to a recent blogpost of mine (pardon the self-reference).

A recent defense of Wal-Mart. People who oppose high corporate taxes and support small businesses over large ones confuse me.

A smoking ban in Holland has an interesting effect: smokers merely pay the owner to be able to smoke, so the owner can pay the resulting fine. Sounds pretty efficient to me! "Just paying my Pigouvian tax, thanks."

GM CEO being driven 9 hours from Detroit to DC. Seems like a silly way to support your own business to me.

Crises and protectionism. Leading scholars compile their essays into an e-book every world leader should read.

As bad as the 80s, not the 30s. Time remarks that the talk of the current recession is a bit overdramatic. If this recession becomes even remotely comparable to the Great Depression, it hasn't gotten there yet.

Hey, I didn't know the Economist had a free audio/video page. Neat!

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