Rodrik cites Mankiw, who thinks his blog is eating up too much of his time and concludes:
So if economists with high opportunity costs of time start to get out, shall we have a lemons problem on our hands? Will eventually the only prolific bloggers remain the ones that are not worth reading?
Now there is the obvious point that some of the big names in economics (not Dani thankfully) are a bit lemonish themselves, but we won’t go there. No, we will just point out that a shared blog like this one is the sustainable solution. I can’t speak for my co-conspirators, but I can barely find the time to write even short, minimal content posts like this one. If I had to do this every day I wouldn’t. But we have a team to pick up the slack.
Hey, I commented accurately on Dani's blog that I never read Mankiw's blog, so will not miss it. Will go further. I think he has been the worst thing that ever happened to economics textbooks.
ReplyDeleteI once got in trouble over on maxspeak for saying in a comment that he was "pathetically nice." He demanded an apology from me, which I gave. He is actually a nice guy, but I have stayed away from his blog. Rodrik is another matter.
And, oh yes, I suggested that adding co-bloggers is a way to go for the really busy, big cheese economist who wants to blog, just like us smaller cheeses... :-).
Barkley