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

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Economics & Marginalia: April 8, 2022

April 08, 2022
I thought this VoxDev write-up of Julia Fonseca and Adrien Matray’s new paper on the effect of the extension of banking services to under-served areas in Brazil was superb. It’s structured wonderfully: they show the overall impact of the programme, provide evidence on why it works the way it does, a...
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Economics & Marginalia: November 26, 2021

November 26, 2021
Illness and the prospect of this nu variant has put something of a dampener on my mood, but you know what cheers me up? Every year, without fail, the DI crew unearth a paper-of-the-year candidate in their JMC series, and this year it’s this stunning work from Juan Felipe Riaño. Just d...
Blog Post

Economics & Marginalia: November 5, 2021

November 05, 2021
Speaking of tax systems, a nice piece from Nishant Yonkan and co-authors (including Branko Milanovic) looks at the discrepancies between survey and tax data to investigate for which populations these data sources disagree and why this disagreement arises. It won’t surprise many to dis...
Blog Post

Economics & Marginalia: August 27, 2021

August 27, 2021
God, I love cricket. Even when one team is miles, miles, ahead there’s drama and intrigue to keep you interested. Though England’s performance on the first couple of days has once again provided a stern lesson to the commentariat that variance neglect and over-interpretation of the win/lose binary a...