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: August 20, 2021

August 20, 2021
Normally when a policy goes awry, you have to really search for the evidence to prove it. It’s pretty rare that things go wrong quite as quickly, viscerally and heartbreakingly as they are in Afghanistan right now. This is the place where I usually insert a pithy joke, but my well of amusement has r...
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Economics & Marginalia: June 25, 2021

June 25, 2021
One of the best things I read all week was Justin Sandefur laying the absolute smack down on the World Bank in Nature. I know what you’re thinking – he’s already killed the Doing Business survey, has he no mercy? But it’s for a good cause. He argues that the Bank’s failure t...
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Economics & Marginalia: May 28, 2021

May 28, 2021
The one benefit of a baby up at 4 in the morning with teething pain and demanding (loudly, repeatedly and convincingly) to be held in order to sleep is that it lets you keep up with events on the West Coast of the US, and in particular, LeBron doing LeBron things yet again.
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Economics & Marginalia: May 7, 2021

May 07, 2021
How is it possible that each weekend greets me like an oasis apparating to parched traveller in the desert while every week simultaneously flies by with more than 80% of my to-do list undone?