Public Economists You Might Try Reading (Optional)

This is from Alex Tabarrok. The quotes are from an article entitled “How Are Economists Portrayed by the Media? Let’s Ask Them.”

Some journalists (of all political stripes) who write with great economic understanding are

… The quality of the coverage of economics in the media is often excellent and has never been better. Greg Ip, David Leonhardt, Catherine Rampell, Adam Davidson, Stacey Vanek Smith, Cardiff Garcia, Megan McArdle all do superb economic commentary and reporting not just about the economy but about economics. And those are only the people off the top of my head, I could name many more.

Some of these people write regular columns, that appear on the same day(s) every week. Others write occasional columns, that appear irregularly, but still once a week or so.

Ip writes quite a bit for the Wall Street Journal. He writes for two occasional columns called Capital Account and The Outlook. He also writes a lot of the news articles in their Economy section.

David Leonhardt writes a few op-ed pieces a week for The New York Times.

Catherine Rampell writes for The Washington Post, and has a piece appearing every few days. Megan McArdle writes for them as well.

Adam Davidson writes for The New Yorker, mostly about politics, but his understanding of the economics of that politics is very good.

If you like to listen, Stacey Vanek Smith and Cardiff Garcia are on NPR’s Planet Money show. You can also subscribe to her podcast The Indicator.

And then there’s professional economists you might read, like:

The public also has access to top economists through the blogs and social media. I would count Paul Krugman, Tyler Cowen, John Cochrane, and Jeniffer Doleac [sic] in this category.

Krugman’s columns are from The New York Times, where he’s been a regular columnist for over a decade. He’s been a professor at Princeton for about 40 years, and won a Nobel Prize for his work on one aspect of trade (for my money, he could win a second for a different aspect, if they awarded them that way).

I am not yet familiar with Jeniffer Doleac. She’s young/new. I’m on the lookout for her stuff now (she is on Medium and/or Twitter) .

Of course, all of these people also write for other outlets and in other formats.