William J. Polley: Good Blogging Archives

August 18, 2008

Econ Academics

Christian Zimmerman has set up a new blog aggregator for academic economics, called Econ Academics. Looks very good.

That reminds me I need to update my blogroll. Just need to get all my changes together and do it all at once.

Posted by William Polley at 04:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 12, 2008

David Altig is back... and he brought some friends

I am happy to report that macroblog is back. David Altig, who had been running the blog independently since 2004 when he was at the Cleveland Fed, has brought back the blog with a new look and some new co-authors. Altig, now research director at the Atlanta Fed, is bringing the other Atlanta economists into the blogosphere as co-authors on macroblog.

Welcome back, David, and thanks for making macroblog part of the research mission of the Atlanta Fed.

The Chicago Fed also has a blog (three, in fact). Are there others I'm not aware of? Are the other Feds listening?

Posted by William Polley at 01:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 28, 2007

RePEc has a blog

My economist readers probably are familiar with RePEc. Christian Zimmerman has added a blog to the impressive list of resources over there. Here's what he says under the heading "about this blog".

We, the RePEc team, discuss here the workings of RePEc and seek input from the community on how we can improve. We also want to give more volunteers opportunity to be part of this project and provide valuable services to the profession. Finally, we also discuss issues about the dissemination of research on Economics.

Here's what he means by addressing the dissemination of research. On the topic of peer review...

We can think completely differently. Think of this blog. I rant on a topic, and then others can comment on it and openly declare whether this rant was valuable or not. Why not do this with academic work? An early attempt was done with WoPEc. This was the first RePEc service, similar to IDEAS and EconPapers today, which offered for some time on each paper’s abstract page a discussion section. Participation was minimal and there was very little value added (see an example, I could not find one that actually had comments). This aspect of WoPEc was finally abandoned. A second attempt was organized by SOLE (Society of Labor Economists), that would post every two weeks a new paper to discuss. Again, participation was small, and the project was finally abandoned.

The latest attempt is the Economics E-Journal, which allows registered users to rate and comment on discussion papers. Once the editors find that a paper has generated sufficient interest, it is promoted to the journal, where it can still be discussed. This initiative started this year, so the jury is still out whether it will be successful in the end. So far, it looks very promising.

From time to time, members of the RePEc team are approached and asked whether a discussion section could be added to our services. Given the past experience with WoPEc and the large monitoring costs involved, we are not enthusiastic. Of course if other volunteers are interested in working on this, we may think about it. But first we need to understand whether there is really a demand for this. Maybe RePEc is now too large for this and such initiative should be left to field specific initiatives (SOLE again?).

RePEc is a quality operation. Zimmerman has been one of the driving forces for the site in recent years. Though there is a long history going back to the now-defunct WoPEc as he mentions. (The site still exists but is no longer updated.) One could also trace its lineage back to the working paper site (EconWPA) at Wash U started by Bob Parks. Bill Goffe's Resources for Economics also came out of those early years. Zimmerman also had a quantitative macro and RBC site that is now part of RePEc that goes back to 1995 according to the copyright. (It's a trip down memory lane thinking about all those early sites.) That sounds about right. That was about the time that I was starting grad school and was pretty early in "Internet Time." The RePEc blog might be a good way to get more people involved, and that would be positive for the site and the profession.

Hat tip to Greg Mankiw.

A footnote: The Wash U connection to all those early internet archives is everywhere. As a minor in computer science in college, I remember well the freeware archive at Wash U. It was probably the first internet address that I memorized... wuarchive.wustl.edu. If you were a CS student in the early to mid '90s, you used it. Sadly, this too is defunct. Does anyone else remember wuarchive?

Posted by William Polley at 11:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 20, 2007

Tim Schilling's blog has moved

Tim Schilling has moved from the Chicago Fed to the Powell Center for Economic Literacy. Thus his blog had to move as well. You can now find it at http://www.valuingeconomics.blogspot.com/. In his latest posts, he finds economic ideas in the Meredith Willson musical The Music Man... everything from elasticity and externalities to the roles of government and the entrepreneur. If you teach economics, put Schilling's blog in your feed reader.

Posted by William Polley at 12:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 27, 2007

We'll miss ya, Max

Max Sawicky is relinquishing the microphone.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Max. We certainly have differing views on a number of things, but he has always conducted himself as a gentleman. We've linked to each other's posts a number of times, and it has made for great conversation. I will miss that.

He says that his "new professional responsibilities will preclude any public pontificating." That's too bad. I imagine that it will be difficult for him to control himself! But in all seriousness, I hope that he finds his new position to be fulfilling and rewarding.

Best wishes, Max!

Posted by William Polley at 03:02 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 02, 2007

Willem Buiter has a blog

Via Marginal Revolution we read that Willem Buiter is blogging. It's off to a good start. Here's a slice of a recent post titled "If there’s a credit crunch, leave the Fed Funds rate alone, raise the discount rate and use the discount window".

The central bank (the Fed, as the central bank faced most directly with the mess of the sub-prime mortgage debacle – a mess to a large extent of the Fed’s making) therefore most respond to a credit crunch by guaranteeing the liquidity of a wide range of instruments held by private parties, instruments that without the Fed’s intervention would become illiquid. The Fed should do so by following Bagehot’s 150-year old advice. With one slight clarifying amendment, that advice is as follows: in times of financial stress and distress, lend freely, at a penalty rate, against collateral that would be good in normal times but may by heavily impaired in the extraordinary times prompting the Fed’s intervention.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Posted by William Polley at 11:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 17, 2007

David Altig named Research Director at the Atlanta Fed

Congratulations, David! Via the Real Time Economics blog at the Wall Street Journal. (Hat tip: Mark Thoma)

Economics blogging can be good for your career. David Altig, author of the Macroblog has just been named research director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

Mr. Altig is currently associate research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and also teaches at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. His blog postings reflect a mainstream Fed view on key macroeconomic questions of the day.

In an interview, Mr. Altig said he doesn’t know if the blog will continue in his new job. “I‘ve been at it for a while, and I enjoy it but I have to take the lay of the land there and see whether my responsibilities are consistent with keeping it up or not.” A start date hasn’t been announced.

David's blog is one of the best when it comes to macro and monetary policy. At the moment, I have more of his posts saved in my feedreader than from any other blog. That says something. His blog started up about the same time as mine, and he was one of the first in the economics wing of the blogsphere to notice this little blog.

His analysis often includes a statement of the conventional wisdom with a healthy dose of reality. His post yesterday is another good one in that tradition.

I wish David the very best in his new position, and I hope that his blog will continue, even if it is in a less frequent form.

Posted by William Polley at 04:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 25, 2007

Dani Rodrik has a blog

http://rodrik.typepad.com/

Via DeLong, Mankiw, Marginal Revolution, and New Economist.

Posted by William Polley at 10:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 05, 2007

Felix Salmon now blogs at his own site

Felix Salmon is no longer blogging at Economonitor, but he's dishing up his usual commentary at his own place, felixsalmon.com. Update your blogrolls.

Posted by William Polley at 03:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 30, 2006

Adam Smith on trade protection as rent seeking

Returning visitors will immediately recognize that this post was inspired by these comments. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith has a lot to say about "rent". In fact, Smith spends the whole of Chapter 11 of Book I on the subject. This rent of which he writes is a term for the returns to a fixed factor. For example, mineral wealth taken out of the ground returns rent to the landowner. In economic parlance, rent is often synonymous with profit. While most of the time there is no confusion from this, economists (and non-economists) also use the term "rent seeking" to describe behavior that is wasteful and decreases social welfare. When speaking of "rent seeking", they are not talking about the normal types of profit maximization behavior. Nor are they referring to the division of labor so eloquently described by Adam Smith. Behavior that Adam Smith praised in The Wealth of Nations (prudence, self-betterment, etc.) is not identical to the rent seeking behavior described by scholars such as Tullock and Krueger. The fact that the word "rent" is used in both contexts is perhaps unfortunate, but too solidly entrenched in the literature and the minds of economists to ever change. I believe that most economists are careful about the difference. Outside the profession, however, I think there may be some confusion that ends up giving economics a bad reputation.

As I pointed out last year in an Econoblog with Russell Roberts,

"The Theory of Moral Sentiments," on the other hand, is a treatise on temperance. It is a study of propriety, sympathy, and justice. Sadly, many people don't even know the book exists or that it was written by the man who is sometimes called the "father of capitalism." Ignorance of Smith's other major work leads people to think that economics is only about greed, self-interest, and rational maximization. As a result, many intelligent people who would be quite capable of becoming economically literate are turned off to economics because they see it as promoting a "greed is good" mentality that doesn't square with their world view. Unfortunately, this perception is so well embedded in the pop culture view of economics and economists that it may be very difficult to reverse.

While it helps to read The Theory of Moral Sentiments to reinforce the fact that Adam Smith was no Gordon Gecko, it is not really necessary. Only a misreading of The Wealth of Nations would cause someone to think economics is about "greed." Greed and self-interest are not identical ideas. Greed is self-interest run amok--self-interest with no temperance.

Consider first what Smith said in comparing trade protection to monopoly. After all, giving trade protection increases the market power of the domestic firm.

To give the monopoly of the home-market to the produce of domestic industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in some measure to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, and must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or a hurtful regulation. (Book IV, Chapter 2, paragraph 11)

Since Smith lived 200 years before Tullock and Krueger, he did not frame the discussion in precisely the same terms, but the notion of rent seeking as a destructive influence is present in The Wealth of Nations. It is in one of my favorite passages in the entire text. The context is a discussion of barriers to trade. I was first introduced to this passage in my 2nd year of grad school, and it has been with me ever since. Combined with the previous passage, it shows that Smith took a dim view of what we would today call "rent seeking," but correctly saw that it would always be with us as a thorn in our side.

To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it. Not only the prejudices of the public, but what is much more unconquerable, the private interests of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it. Were the officers of the army to oppose with the same zeal and unanimity any reduction in the numbers of forces with which master manufacturers set themselves against every law that is likely to increase the number of their rivals in the home-market; were the former to animate their soldiers in the same manner as the latter enflame their workmen to attack with violence and outrage the proposers of any such regulation, to attempt to reduce the army would be as dangerous as it has now become to attempt to diminish in any respect the monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained against us. This monopoly has so much increased the number of some particular tribes of them that, like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature. The Member of Parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening this monopoly is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose numbers and wealth render them of great importance. If he opposes them, on the contrary, and still more if he has authority enough to be able to thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank, nor the greatest public services can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real danger, arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists. (Book IV, Chapter 2, paragraph 43)

Posted by William Polley at 11:18 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

October 05, 2006

New addition to the blogroll

Gabriel Mihalache has a blog called Economic Investigations that you might want to check out. He is a self-confessed "neoclassical cowboy" who spent the summer reading David Romer's Advanced Macroeconomics and everything he could find by Robert Lucas. I think students might particularly like his blog because he comes at it from the point of view of someone who, well..., spent the summer reading Romer and Lucas. In other words, he's brimming with enthusiasm and ideas. Some of his posts would be good fodder for grad student discussions. Take a look!

Posted by William Polley at 02:07 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 11, 2006

Additions to the blogroll

Frequent commenter knzn has a blog. New commenter Bill Conerly has one as well. I've also reorganized the blogroll. I used to keep a category of reciprocal links for blogs that link back here. But it got out of date, and it's easier to just have a big long list for blogs that are "mostly economics".

UPDATE: One more... Creative Destruction which looks like a group blog from Gettysburg College.

UPDATE 2: I just received an e-mail from RGE Monitor informing me of a new blog over there called Economonitor. Looks like it will be a good one.

Posted by William Polley at 04:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 30, 2006

Now you can see them too

Videocasts from economists? Yes.

Brad DeLong muses over his morning coffee at Google Video.

James Reese expands the successful Radio Economics concept into the world of moving pictures at Video Economics. You can subscribe to Video Economics by entering this address into iTunes or other video podcast software. (http://www.acidplanet.com/podcasts/rss.asp?id=137)

They take different appraoches to the medium. DeLong does the talking head routine. Reese's site is, at least for the first episode, a slide show with audio. For a lot of things, the latter would be better. Both sites are worth your time to check out.

Posted by William Polley at 09:31 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 26, 2006

Lots and lots o' links

I'm doing some research this weekend. My computer is grinding away at the numerical analysis which gives me a chance to multi-task and check out what I've been missing.

First of all, the Senators' trip to China continues to get media play. Nothing new to talk about. You know what I think.

Rounding up all the rest of the weekend's news, Big Picture and macroblog do the honors. Do yourself a favor and check them out. Their impressive collections of links could keep you busy all day. Macroblog's post is almost all links with a few connecting words! Very nice.

FOMC this week. I will be in class when the press release will come out on Tuesday, so I'll comment later in the afternoon. The minutes from Bernanke's first meeting will be of some significance, but we'll have to wait a few weeks for that.

And with that, my computer program finished crunching its numbers, so it's back to work.

Posted by William Polley at 11:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 08, 2006

Demography matters

Edward Hugh was kind enough to send me an e-mail announcing a new group blog, http://demographymatters.blogspot.com/.

For those who don't know, Hugh also blogs at A Fistful of Euros (a large group blog) and he has a personal blog, Bonobo Land. I've read them, and you should too. My blogroll reflects my reading with a lag, so excuse me while I update.

Posted by William Polley at 10:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 29, 2005

New blog on history of economic thought

The economic wing of the blogosphere is expanding. Make room on your blogroll for Adam Smith Lives! The author is Sandra Peart, and it looks like a great read.

Hat tip: Marginal Revolution

Posted by William Polley at 01:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 18, 2005

Blog find of the day

I'm going to bookmark this one. It's called Instant History. The author plans to post a cover of a historic issue of Time or Newsweek and comment on how the news magazines covered the events in that issue--history's first draft.

I really like the idea. I suppose it's because I have a couple of boxes full of old newspapers that I felt were worth saving. I have a New York Times from the day after Deng Xiaopeng died. I think I also have the very first color front page of the Times. I've got a clipping from the Wall Street Journal after Greenspan's "irrational exuberance" quote. Of course, my collection also includes a number of issues of the local paper in the days after 9/11. These are indeed history's first draft. It's why I like "On This Day." Instant History is going up on the blogroll in that category as well.

I admit that on more than one occasion after doing some research in the library I wandered over to the Time and Newsweek magazines and paged through some random issues from decades past. It would be interesting to do a more systematic search to see how these outlets reported on the economy--especially given the way I concluded Tuesday's post. I think I'll do that when I get a chance.

Hat tip: Betsy's Page

Posted by William Polley at 12:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 08, 2005

New economics blog

Via macroblog comes word of an addition to the economics wing of the blogosphere.

James D. Hamilton of UCSD has a blog called Econbrowser. Check it out! Among other things, Hamilton is an expert on oil prices, so it will be very interesting to keep up with his analysis. For starters, he says,

All but one of the U.S. recessions since World War II have been preceded by a dramatic increase in crude petroleum prices. Recent turbulence in energy markets has some analysts speculating that, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, it could be deja vu all over again. But this oil price shock differs significantly from earlier episodes, leading me to believe that the economy will be able to adapt to the new pricing environment without a major economic slowdown.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by William Polley at 01:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 01, 2005

New links

Market Power has moved into the category of reciprocal links. (Thanks Phil!)

Tonight's other addition is long overdue, Vox Baby a blog written by Andrew Samwick at Dartmouth. Enjoy.

Posted by William Polley at 02:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 29, 2005

Ozblog new site rollout

Alan has been testing the new site for a couple weeks, and today is the official rollout to coincide with the anniversary of Kansas's entry into the union.

For those of you who don't know Alan or his blog, let me fill you in. Alan and I went to college together in the early '90s. He edited the school newspaper; I worked in the college TV studio and was executive producer for our newsmagazine show. He was a DJ at the college radio station; I was a guest DJ once in a while. Our interest in media and politics was matched only by our appetite for $4.25 pizza (the best value in town at the time).

He's a Minnesota native who transplanted to Kansas and now covers Kansas issues out in Washington DC for Knight-Ridder. The "Oz" in Ozblog is appropriate--he's not in Kansas anymore! The content of his blog is mostly political, through the eyes of a beltway reporter. But don't be surprised to see some discussion of pop culture. Now that he's getting the blog going again, I expect to be linking to it frequently.

We started blogging at roughly the same time. He was doing it for his employer at first--for the Democratic and Republican conventions. I had been thinking about starting a blog for a while. When I saw him doing it, I decided to take the plunge too.

Today's post is on the Boeing deal with China.

Congrats on the new site, Alan!

Posted by William Polley at 08:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 28, 2005

Metablogging

Via Newmark's Door comes this very interesting site about blogging.

Posted by William Polley at 09:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 22, 2005

Coming soon... the return of Ozblog

Ozblog has been retooling his site. The new site with a new address should be unveiled next Saturday.

Looking forward to it!

Oh, and by the way, the paper he writes for is in Wichita. Did I mention that they won tonight?

Posted by William Polley at 10:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 10, 2005

Updated links

Two new reciprocal links in my list today from folks who linked to me over the weekend.

macroblog (If you're interested in macroeconomics, this blog is excellent, a must read.)

Stumbling and Mumbling (A variety of topics, including economics, from across the pond.)

Many thanks!

Posted by William Polley at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 11, 2004

Quo vadis, Ozblog?

My friend Alan considers what to do next.

I think our readership overlaps a little bit. Alan plugged my blog when it was just getting started. But for those of you who don't know of Ozblog, I invite you to check it out while it lasts.

I, for one, would like to see Alan keep blogging independently.