Fed economist Karthik Athreya's rant -- Economics is hard, don't let bloggers tell you otherwise -- against bloggers (both experts and non-experts, and he names them) holding forth on the Big Economic Questions of our time has had at least one good effect: many bloggers, including those not named in Athreya's rant, have risen up to defend the role of blogs in policy debates; some have also used this occasion to talk about the role of blogging in their professional lives. Here are a few to start you off:
Mark Thoma: Don't let a Fed employee tell you otherwise ...
Rajiv Sethi: On blogs and economic discourse
Mike Konczal: Blogging and the economics profession.
Nick Rowe: The use of knowledge in blogging.
Matt Yglesias: Do I have something interesting to say?.
Athreya's ire seems directed at non-economist bloggers and anyone portraying macroeconomics as simple (as opposed to the very idea of blogging about economics, which would be more problematic IMO). I can sympathize with his position 1) as the daughter of an economist ;) and 2) as a science student who's been frustrated by misrepresentations of scientific research/theories in the non-scientist blogosphere.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the links! This is a very interesting discussion...
Any field that becomes a theology in the service of giving hustlers a walkover becomes unnecessarily complex. It need not have been that way.
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