Economics & Marginalia

Economics and Marginalia is an attempt to keep ahead of the avalanche of content published every week – the writing on economics, politics, development and pop culture that keeps my brain occupied. In it, I pick between 5 and 10 of my favourite pieces of -mainly- popular economics and political commentary every week and briefly summarise what I liked about it, or what it taught me, in an accessible way.

The guiding spirit behind this blog is that the world is complicated but comprehensible, and I look to showcase writing that doesn’t dumb down the complexity, but puts a premium on clarity.

More from the Series

Blog Post

Economics & Marginalia: June 30, 2023

July 03, 2023
I’m writing this one several thousand feet in the air as I return from my first-ever trip to DC (and indeed the US, as absurd as that sounds)—a flying visit of two days, packed with meeting and almost no time to see the city, so forgive me if this feels a) rushed, and b) tired; that will be because ...
Blog Post

Economics & Marginalia: June 9, 2023

June 09, 2023
Apparently, New York had the worst air quality in the world yesterday, which made me think of my childhood in Hong Kong, when there were days you had to chew before inhaling. As Alex Tabarrok points out, air pollution is really bad—for health, productivity and cognitive development, but it’s also tr...
Blog Post

Economics & Marginalia: April 14, 2023

April 14, 2023
I’ve been away for the last couple of Fridays, so this week there is an absolute mass of material to get through this week. I’ve been brutal in editing it down: there are probably ten times as many interesting bits of esoteric statistics, development economics and political commentary from the last ...
Blog Post

Economics & Marginalia: June 10, 2022

June 10, 2022
The best thing I read this week was Michael Nielsen’s long, thoughtful, erudite criticism of Effective Altruism, the moral philosophy that argues for us to adopt an approach to life that relies on evidence and logic to establish how to achieve the most good for others over time, and to apply that un...