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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been trying to learn a little about economics. Do you have any favorite economists, etc that you follow? I’m trying to learn more about the interaction of QE, rising fed rates, growing deficits, etc.

Basically, I’d like to move beyond the headlines and the spin.

[Update]

Here are some people I try to follow:

Jan Hatzius - Goldman Economist

Robert Schiller

Stephen Roach - Yale Economist https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/stephen-s--roach

Jeremy Grantham - GMO

Ray Dalio - Bridgewater

Larry Summers

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If you are trying to learn about a subject, then I fully recommend you disregard current popular subject matter experts and focus on learning the basics as that is where you will learn the most especially considering the subject matter experts probably won't make sense if you do not understand the basics.

How each person learns is subjective but I find textbooks are by far the best learning materials so if you are like me, then I would recommend you buy some introductory economic textbooks and read them. I know a lot about economics because I read a few intro economics textbooks and I kept reading new textbooks based on what interested me from previous ones and now I have read over 20.

Great question, thanks for asking!

I like Nikolai Kondratiev, Pettis, Alfred Marshall, Carmen Reinhart, and Bill Gates (read his recent stuff on software economics)

I don't like Krugman and Greenspan.

I'm particularly curious about why you prefer Reinhart over Krugman, specifically because of the disagreement over the famously erroneous Reinhart-Rogoff results (Krugman comment here: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/reinhart-rogoff.... As far as I know, Reinhart-Rogoff never republished or responded further than what Krugman discussed in the linked post). Specific examples supporting/disproving the case of either would be helpful.

I tend to ignore Krugman when he's talking politics (eg. his prediction of a Trump recession). However, when he goes through the process of laying out the assumptions of an economic model (happens in many of his blog posts labeled 'wonkish'), his discussion of economic consequences of various policies seems to map very well with reality.

>Basically, I’d like to move beyond the headlines and the spin.

Create a Twitter account and get on FinTwit (finance Twitter). Find the people doing real research (you have a couple in your list, Dalio, Grantham, I follow some of the guys from Ritholtz Wealth Management who are active on the platform) and follow their retweets or follows. More information than you can handle.

The Wealth of Humans by Ryan Avent is worth a read to understand the current labour market.

One I just found recently (via it being by far the leader in a recent "other blog" survey on slatestarcodex) is:

https://marginalrevolution.com/about

"Marginal Revolution is the blog of Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, both of whom teach at George Mason University. MR began in August of 2003 and there have been new posts daily since that time. In numerous reviews and ratings over the years Marginal Revolution has consistently been ranked as the best or one of the best economic blogs on the web, but it is more (and less) than that, also representing the quirks of its authors."

As far as I can tell so far, it seems to be a relatively unbiased, non-ideological commentary on economic news. One interesting article (not from the site itself, but from an "assorted links" post) is this one on NAFTA negotiations:

https://moneymaven.io/baldingsworld/china/chinese-economics-...

Maybe I'm wrong, but as far as I can tell, that sort of perspective is highly unusual in mainstream public economic news. I've certainly never seen many articles on trade policy that go much beyond discussing aggregate GDP.

The SSC survey:

https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9aak39/favo...

Thomas Sowell http://www.tsowell.com/

James D. Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, Russell S. Sobel, David A. Macpherson (the authors of "Economics: Private and Public Choice")

I also have to second the "I don't like Krugman" opinion. Not that predicting the future is ever reliable of course, but his seriously incorrect predictions seem to be clearly motivated by politics. That won't help you understand economics.

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