There are better econ blog aggregators around than this. Should be thought of as permanently under construction. In no particular order at all, and with links to Twitter feeds:
‘Ben Bernanke’s blog’, so named, since the ex Fed-Chair does not have to think of a catchy title.
David Andolfatto, ‘Macro Mania’ I wish he wrote more, because I feel I get better at RBC each time he does. Has also written some great stuff on Bitcoin and the blockchain. He works for the St Louis FEd, and he’s quite outspoken – it’s interesting that this kind of thing is allowed in the Fed Reserve System.
Steve Williamson ‘New monetarist economics’ One of my heroes. Steve is one of the pioneers of fundamental models of money, that try to explain how it emerges in the first place. Recent themes include careful critiques of Fed policy, and Neo-Fisherianism, the analytics of how low inflation is caused by, and not countered by low interest rates.
Paul Krugman ‘The conscience of a liberal’ Amidst the distressed siren posts about US politics, you will get the occasional zinger, on robots, or the zero bound, or tax reform, or globalisation, or healthcare, often signalled by ‘:wonkish’.
‘Mainly macro’ If I live to have Grandchildren, I’ll tell them that SWL, King of the UK bloggers, once sent me a post to comment on before posting. Title not quite accurate, as there is a lot of politics and political economy, all of it good.
FT, ‘Alphaville’ : if you want to get the most negative takes on tech possible, plus some really interesting stuff on macro and finance, this is where. Occasionally they have published guest posts by me.
FT, ‘Money supply’ This was recommended to me once, way back, but I never ever read it.
Mark Thoma, ‘Economist’s view’, the Mother of all aggregator sites. Once you have gone there, you probably won’t come back to this page. You can tell when he’s at work because the entire internet slows down.
Greg Mankiw He and Paul K pretty much started this whole thing, but then Greg petered out. Can’t think of anything I ever read on it, but then after writing that beautiful essay on optimal tax theory, how can this blog not be on here?
Atlanta Fed, ‘Macroblog’ Was this the pioneer central bank blog? I think so. Yet it’s often the most personal and outspoken, ahead of the others.
Francis Diebold, ‘No hesitations’
John Cochrane, ‘Grumpy economist’ writes with great clarity [oh read his hilarous guide on writing for PhDs] about micro, macro, finance. But also relentless and mystifying faith in all things conservative/free market.
Chris House, ‘Orderstatistic’ Chris taught one of the desk officers at the Noah Smith collective, and also Claudia Sahm, and he really knows his stuff.
Roger Farmer, ‘My Economic Window’ Roger is a must read. Never misses a chance to explain to you why NK macro is wrong, there is no natural rate, and central banks should peg the stock market.
New York Fed, ‘Liberty Street Economics’ Surprisingly readable for a central bank blog.
LSE blog on British politics and policy A lot of lifeless and random short essays here, but it is a big part of the UK conversation, and I often find good reading tips, so always check it.
NIESR blog [inc Jagit Chadha, Angus Amstrong, Monique Ebelle]. This was the first place ever to pay me to do economics, so I have a soft spot for it.
Chris Dillow, ‘Stumbling and Mumbling’ This blog is neither. Love his adroit reflections on disastrous UK politics, and that he has read much more widely and deeply than I have.
Noah Smith, ‘Noahpinion’ [Inc multiple desk officers writing under the collective Pseudonym ‘Noah Smith’]. Also writes for Bloomberg View. Polymathic, well read, and a great sparring partner on the web. He has covered so many topics now that I usually start something by wondering what Noah decided.
‘The visible hand in economics’ [whatever happened to this?]
JP Koning, ‘Moneyness‘ JP has been excellent on the details of the zero bound, and Governance of central banks, and Bitcoin, India’s demonetization, and the history of money. I’d be grateful if someone would pay him to write a book and stop doing his day job.
Brad DeLong Needs Babelfish to translate, but, once done, you have the commanding heights of intellectual endeavour right there.
Mick Grady, ‘FundamentalMacro’. Ace former senior BoE staffer with rare mix of financial markets and monetary policy theory literacy. Has gone quiet since taking up a job with Aviva.
The Long Run: Economic History Society Blog. Only just found this one.
PseudoErasmus: Econ history and comparative development blog. Allegedly by amateur, but seems far too learned to believe that story. Track down his/her amazing reading list on econ history. Then give up work, retire to the Dacha, and come back in 17 years when you are done, happy and fulfilled.
WaitingforTax: blog on tax and public policy by QC Jolyon Maugham, lately prominent Remain campaigner. Learned a lot from this site, eg about the tech firm tax dodges.
Philosophy of Money: Eric Lonergan, author and macro fund manager. Ardent advocate of helicopter money. Don’t often agree, but always well written, and Eric reads very widely. Arguments punctuated by returns to classic econ texts.
CoppolaComment: the blog of Frances Coppola. She writes about all sorts, including econ history, finance, banking, central banking, digital currency, money, econ methodology and politics.
Andrew Gelman: eminent statistician. Lately in the public eye as a protagonist in the social science replication crisis also engulfing econ.
Free Lunch: Martin Sandbu. Misnomer, as it is not free. Huge volume of interesting econ/finance thoughts, betraying very high IQ. Often don’t agree, eg Martin is convinced there is no zero bound that can’t be overcome, and that there is no need for a EZ fiscal union.
Interfluidity, Steve Randy Waldman. Econ, politics, sociology, futurology, finance. Actually pretty much anything. Classic product of the internet: an amateur commanding the blog heights because he happens to have read shitloads and understood it.
Dan Davies: ex Bank Analyst. Was so good at it he got to the backward bending bit of his labour supply curve. Doesn’t really blog any more, but used to a lot at Crooked Timber. Find his brilliant metaphor for the LIBOR scandal involving orange wholesaling.
Martin Wolf. Needs no introduction. Lately justifiably bellicose about the appalling state of UK politics and Brexit. Don’t be fooled by the Twitter presence, which is merely cosmetic.
Nick Rowe, ‘Worthwhile Canadian Initiative’ Nick would be the recipient of the Nobel Prize for reinventing mathematical macro in word form, if it were ever awarded. V insightful stuff on macro, money, finance. Particular favourites are his critiques of NK macro and monetary policy.
Branko Milanovic, Global Inequality There are two Milanovic’s. One is the character who betrays a deep unswerving hatred for liberal democracy and any kind of capitalism. The other is the guy who has done a lot of good work documenting trends in global inequality. Famous for the ‘elephant chart’ purporting to show how the middle classes were screwed by globalisation, debunked somewhat by Adam Corlett at the UK’s Resolution Foundation.
The Money Illusion, Scott Sumner. King of the ‘market monetarists’. Total faith in the power of NGDP targeting to cure boom and bust forever. Thinks really hard about money, but IMO a good lesson in what happens when verbal reasoning goes off on a random walk, untethered by exposure to formal macro. But hey, he has given evidence to Congress, and gets paid to blog.
Principles and interest, Toby Nangle. If you think fund managers are the bad guys, you haven’t met Toby. Famous for the Nangle-Goodhart, global reserve army of labour theory of real rates.
Bank Underground, Bank of England staff blog. Not as underground as the punning title indicates. But not as tame as knowing that it is managed by an editorial committee would make you think. Maybe I would not have left the BoE if this had been there in my day.
Policy Sketchbook. Anon. Great applied UK social policy commentary. I conjecture a deeply frustrated, clever civil servant seething in an office somewhere about all the dross he or she reads.
Chris Cook. Policy editor at Newsnight, BBC. Not confined to econ. Great takes on the economics of education and social mobility, health service funding, public finances, all kinds.
Macromom, Claudia Sahm. Claudia has been at the forefront of taking down the snakepit of sexism/bullying that is EJRMR. And she has written about macro, econ methodology, Fed politics.
Diane Coyle. The Enlightened Economist – author of a brilliant book about GDP that validates what might be an unintended reference to herself in her blog title – posts reviews of econ and tech books here.
Cecchetti and Schoenholtz. Money, Banking and Financial Markets . Steve C was research director at the New York Fed a while back. Posts are a bit long, but straddle academic and practical econ and finance really well.
Unlearning Economics. [Twitter]. Relentless scorn heaped on mainstream econ. Aside from the trolling, there are some good points there.
Econ commentators of no fixed abode. Linking to their Twitter feeds only, which is the best way to get their otherwise dispersed material.
These are often people high enough up the foodchain to get regular commissions by different publications [and so eschew a personal blog]…. But I suppose low down enough that they don’t have a highly paid exclusive column like the Krugmans. Not sure the theory fits for all these.
Jonathan Portes. Formerly NIESR Director, now Prof at Kings. Blogs sometimes at NottheTreasuryView but more often in our quality press. Econ of immigration, Brexit, public policy generally, macro. Had some great fights with Niall Ferguson.
Duncan Weldon. Ex Newsnight Econ Editor, now Head of Research at Resolution Group. Writes for Guardian, Prospect and more. Macro, central banks, econ history. Origin of term ‘bin the turkey’ meaning to give up prematurely.
George Magnus. Blogs at Prospect and elsewhere. Ex Chief Econ at UBS. Knows lots about macro, finance and China [book coming out shortly]. Topic of disapproving laser eyes meme. Not quick enough off the mark to grab the plain ‘GeorgeMagnus’ twitter handle.
Olivier Blanchard. Now senior fellow at Peterson Institute. Ex Chief Econ at IMF, MIT prof. Recent themes: we should raise the inflation target to 4. Macro doesn’t need a wholesale rebuild.
Larry Summers. Has a blog called ‘Larry Summers‘, which meant many of us had to think of other titles for ours. Christ, what am I doing explaining who Larry Summers is? You probably know all his opinions, though maybe not the one about how he thought the Treasury undid a lot of the Fed’s QE by twisting its debt issuance towards longer maturities.
Tim Harford. Writer of two superb econ-for-the-masses books. The one about macro was so good it has been discouraging me from writing my own for fear of not being able to match up to it. Has been writing lately about the history of capitalism and technology. Once retweeted me.
John Kay. Ex FT columnist, consultant, author. Some great stuff in the past on measuring inflation, Scottish independence, and much more. Managed to wring a good book out of the concept of obliquity.
Andrew Sentance. The nicest permahawk you will ever meet. Have lately found common ground with him over Brexit, and always had common ground on music. Ex MPC.
Danny Blanchflower. Supremo of the permadoves. Hates theory, macro, Tories and Republicans. Seems to be right about nominal wages since 2008. Ex MPC. Fishes.
Stephanie Flanders. Ex BBC Econ editor. Ex JP Morgan. Bloomberg. Stephanie blocked me on Twitter for some reason.
Ken Rogoff. Ex Chief Econ at IMF. One half of the famous spreadsheet error. Great book on the costs of an economy based around cash. Syndicated in global newspapers and Project Syndicate. Doesn’t use his Twitter, and his home page is probably updated rarely and by an underling. Best just to google.
Joseph Stiglitz. Nobel laureate who writes pretty crazy stuff about political economy now if you ask me. Was cheering on the Greeks to leave the Euro.
Paul Johnson. Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, fondly known as the Gold Standard for think tanks in the UK. Has a Times column whose mission is always to tell politicians off.
City types you should read if you can find contraband versions of their stuff.
Andrew Benito at Goldmans. Heads UK econ there. Frighteningly radical views about monetary and fiscal policy sometimes.
Malcolm Barr at JP Morgan. Has written razor sharp stuff on Brexit this last year.
Econ and business journalists who also have absolutely no need of traffic from a minor blog
Chris Giles Econ editor at FT. I seem to agree with Chris about everything. Perhaps he’s a tad more hawkish than me.
Ben Chu Business editor at the Indy. Skewering Brexiteers and austerians a major pre-occupation.
Sarah O Connor Econ, Labour at the FT. Has written some great stuff on robots, automation, self-employment, the gig economy lately.
Specialist blogs on Brexit
Richard North. [Not Pete North, or Douglas North].
longandvariable 