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: July 26, 2024

July 26, 2024
We lost an intellectual giant last week with the passing of James C. Scott. If they’re very lucky, most great scholars manage to get one really big idea out there into the world, the kind of idea that people cite and are influenced by even without having read the book or paper it came from. The best...
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Economics & Marginalia: July 12, 2024

July 12, 2024
Two posts on the parlous state of social science. First, Ben Recht made me crack up from the title of “I don’t care what the studies say.”, including that masterful full stop. It’s a serious post though, not satire, and though it takes an extreme position, it reflects something about how I feel abou...
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Economics & Marginalia: June 28, 2024

June 28, 2024
The CGD summer Fridays are a great boon to my productivity and mental health (nothing cheers you up like a day monster-hunting and bird watching with a three-year-old), but it does cause side effects, notably an incredible backlog of good writing to try and whittle down to a few bullet points in the...
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Economics & Marginalia: June 14, 2024

June 14, 2024
The Silence of the Links last week came during one of CGDs ‘summer Fridays’, a day off we’re entitled to every other Friday during the ‘summer’ (a phrase for which scare quotes are required in the UK, as this year’s summer has been by turns arctic and monsoonish). While I love writing the links, a d...