Academic Economist Filter: Help me understand the economy

February 27, 2009 11:48 AM

(Academic Economist Filter) What are some of the good journals to find explanations of the economy, past and present. Who are the leaders in this field? Any outstanding review articles?

Help. I’m illiterate when it comes to understanding economics; I have not had beyond a high-school level course and don’t even know where to look up correct and detailed information. Like most people, I can read and find newspaper and magazine articles.

I am hoping not to offend people, but if I use biology as an analogy, most newspaper/magazine science articles are either shallow, not in depth, or out of date (for me). However, If I go read the original scientific journal article that some of the magazine articles are based on, then I can evaluate the study and learn about it in its entirety. If the topic really catches my attention, then I can peruse pubmed on my own, pick out more articles, and learn about the topic in depth. I do not have the same tools to use to understand economics.

Can someone help me find the same basic tools so I can try to wrap my head around the current economic conditions?

-Is there something equivalent to pubmed (a listing that I can search to find published articles in the field)?

-Who are some of the top academic economists (a must read).

-Recommendations for review articles? Or research studies (what would you give to the average undergrad to read as intro to the field, to understand current and past philosophies, models, etc.).

-Are there any good articles explaining outcomes when evaluating a program? (As an analogy to this, if you wanted to test for a drug in cancer, before testing it in people, you would either test it in a cell line or in preclinical animal models and look for various endpoints – apoptosis, cell survival, mutations, modified pathways, etc. Then you would say the drug looks interesting and try it in a small phase I clinical trial, etc. – do economists look at early endpoints? What are they? Are there journal articles define this? Are there economists doing this research or planning to do this research?)

-Are there comparisons between cultures/different economic systems (do economists do this?)

-Anything else you would recommend to wrap my head around this? In summary, I am looking for is an in depth introduction/exlanation from an academic perspective, something that goes beyond magazine articles, newspaper articles, and the pop "book of the day".

Thanks.

posted by Wolfster to education (15 comments total)

IDEAS: Economics and Finance Research

National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER is not free, but you might meet conditions for free downloads. I use this site every day.
posted by jgirl at 12:07 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

jstor.com and google scholar are both used by economists to find articles on a given topic. You'll have a hard time getting access to most papers unless you're on a university computer.

You might find it worthwhile to check out some of the many blogs written by academic economists (eg. Greg Mankiw, Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, freakonomics, Marginal Revolution). In reading them, you may get ideas for additional reading and an idea of their thinking on the economy without the (very) high investment of searching for and trying to understand academic papers.

It sounds like you might benefit from picking up an economics textbook. Good books abound at the introductory (eg. Mankiw, Krugman/Wells, Case/Fair/Oster) and intermediate (eg. for micro, Perloff, Pindyck/Rubinfeld, Varian, for macro, Mankiw) levels. They are expensive, but used older editions often sell for pennies on Amazon, and have few discernible differences from the new editions. If you're interested in the evolution of economic thought, there are economic history textbooks out there, though I don't know enough about this to make a recommendation.
posted by deadweightloss at 12:12 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

Wolfster, I've posted before about David Warsh at Economic Principals, and I still read him every week, and every week he's still doing an excellent job navigating this difficult area for me. He's my best suggestion for a one-stop source, and he links outward to a lot of surprising and useful stuff, too. I don't feel confident that I understand, but I'm confident that he does, which lets me trust him quite a bit.
posted by cgc373 at 12:25 PM on February 27

*For the equivalent to PubMed, I'd have to go with NBER.

*Top economists are not necessarily the people you want to read in order to understand the current economic crisis, which has many of its roots in the financial system. Economics and finance are different fields, so a given economist--even if very, very smart--won't necessarily be saying intelligent things about the current issues. I'd recommend reading the blogs of economists who are making an effort to specifically write about the crisis--both the underlying causes and best policy responses--rather than just "top economists." To me, that would probably include people like Paul Krugman, maybe Angry Bear, and Nouriel Roubini.

*The only thing I can think of in the vein of review articles would be the Economist's Economic Focus weekly column--they're often reviewing recent studies that come out of both the finance and economics fields, with an eye towards studies that are particularly relevant to current economic conditions or politics. Good recent ones have been columns from August 7th, January 8th, and January 29th (I particularly liked that last one). In fact, the entire "Finance and Economics" section of the Economist would probably be really helpful to start reading on a regular basis, if you want to understand the economic concepts underlying the current situation without getting a graduate degree beforehand. In my experience, they really hit the sweet spot of writing things that are more sophisticated than anything I've seen in other papers or magazines, without assuming their readers have any particular background other than being relatively sharp and able to understand non-simple concepts once explained.

*In terms of evaluations: I'm not sure what you mean. A big issue in most social science fields is that it's not possible to do random assignment or to really have a control group most of the time, so of course we can't do experiments or true evaluations about entire economies. Empirical results are pretty much limited to natural experiments (which crop up for pretty small study subjects, not big things like entire economic systems) and looking at correlations and trying to explain it with economic theories. The latter stuff is what you're going to get from reading economics/finance blogs or particularly good analysis in the Economist.
posted by iminurmefi at 12:51 PM on February 27

VoxEU is interesting.

From their "About" page:
VoxEU.org is a policy portal set up by the Centre for Economic Policy Research (www.CEPR.org) in conjunction with a consortium of national sites. Vox aims to promote research-based policy analysis and commentary by leading scholars. The intended audience is economists in governments, international organisations, academia and the private sector as well as journalists specializing in economics, finance and business.
posted by mullacc at 1:17 PM on February 27 [2 favorites]

Well, I have recently taken entry level Micro and Macro courses, and while these were helpful in understanding basic economics principles, I've also been reading a number of blogs that have helped with current events.

Now keep in mind that every economist has a different take on things, so you will get some widely varying opinions on current events.

Greg Mankiw

The Big Picture/Barry Ritholtz

Marginal Revolution

and the Baseline Scenario which has a financial crisis for beginners section, and I think I may have even found via AskMetafilter. Also Planet Money on NPR is good as well.
posted by hazyspring at 1:30 PM on February 27

I'm no expert, but hazyspring is right about the baseline scenario blog.

-Are there comparisons between cultures/different economic systems (do economists do this?)

Karl Polanyi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Polanyi) did a really great cross cultural economic comparison, formalist vs. substantivist economy. plus, it's always fun to be able to say "homo economicus"
posted by Think_Long at 2:29 PM on February 27

Journal-wise, you probably want The Journal of Economic Perspectives. I can't promise you it'll be an easy read, though. If you're truly economically-illiterate, you'll need to start with textbooks.
posted by L0 at 5:52 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

Thomas Sowell is the most easily accessible economist that I have read. His book Basic Economics is an easy read that really lays out basic economic principles as well as common fallacies surrounding economics. He writes about politics & the current state of the economy in his blog.

I've also gained a lot of insight into the current situation from Mish. He seems to have really good real world grasp of the situation. I use his advice & commentary as a guide for my real world investing.
posted by thekiltedwonder at 7:02 PM on February 27

I agree with L0 that the journal you want is the JEP. It has the least math and is really about explaining one particular issue to economists who dont specialize in that issue or to make Some Important Topic accessible to students. Check out a few articles and if you dont understand them you need to hit the books.
posted by shothotbot at 7:13 PM on February 27

I know you asked about journals, but you should look at mutant's MeFi posts.
posted by lukemeister at 8:09 PM on February 27

If you are truly econimcially illiterate you need to start with a textbook as you will not understand journals...when I did my undergraduate degree we didn't really start to read journal articles other than literature reviews until my final year. Reason being that there is an assumption that you know the theories, that you can read notation and that you understand your econometrics so unless you can do that you'll struggle with evaluating anything and will be better off sticking with blogs and the article summaries in something like The Economist.
posted by koahiatamadl at 6:35 AM on February 28

“The Economist" magazine is not only the best news magazine published in the world (IMHO), but does report on current events from an economic perspective in a very understandable way.
posted by Daddysugar at 8:29 PM on February 28

I forgot to mention that“The Economist” is available online for free.
posted by Daddysugar at 8:31 PM on February 28

I forgot to mention that“The Economist” is available online for free.

It is? Since when?
posted by lukemeister at 1:18 PM on March 8