Happy New Year!

I’ve just come back from a two week break. It’s been a good time off, if not for the news of the flooding on the East coast and the Air Asia tragedy.

My resolution for this brand new year of 2015 is to recommit to blogging. I’ve been letting it slide over the past year because of work commitments, but I’m hoping to hit at least one blog post every working day from now on. To do that though, there’ll have to be some changes in my approach – it’ll have to be with much shorter pieces than I’ve done before, though I’m hoping to keep up with the data-centric style I’ve managed to sustain in this blog.

So you’ll probably be hearing much more from me from now on.

I’m On Facebook

I’ve just added a Facebook page for the blog – though I have only a vague idea of what I’m going to do with it or how I’m going to discriminate between that and the blog proper. My idea is to have most of the media coverage to shift there, as that usually doesn’t require much in the way of data support or graphs. The blog in the meantime would concentrate mainly on wonkish stuff.

Let me know in the comments if there’s anything different I ought to be doing here.

Twitter? One thing at a time!

The Value of Twitter, Facebook and Blogs To Economic Development

"In Canada there is a small radical group that refuses to speak English and no one can understand them. They are called separatists…In this country (USA) we have the same kind of group. They are called economists."
Nation's Business (via JokEc)

I was reminded of the above when reading this rather plaintive post on the World Bank’s Development Impact Blog:

The perfectionists versus the reductionists

Women perform 66 percent of the world’s work, and produce 50 percent of the food, yet earn only 10 percent of the income….
--Former President Bill Clinton addressing the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (September 2009)

Impressive, heart-wrenching, charity-inducing, get off your sofa and go do something heartbreaking.

But Wrong...

Blogging About Economics: Positive Externalities

Once upon a time, four development economists decided to start blogging. At the same time, two of them wondered whether blogging had any impact or was at all worthwhile. To make a long story short, they decided to research the issue, and made an experiment out of the launch of their own blog (abstract):

The Impact of Economics Blogs
McKenzie, David; Ozler, Berk

Summary: There is a proliferation of economics blogs, with increasing numbers of economists attracting large numbers of readers, yet little is known about the impact of this new medium. Using a variety of experimental and non-experimental techniques, this study quantifies some of their effects. First, links from blogs cause a striking increase in the number of abstract views and downloads of economics papers. Second, blogging raises the profile of the blogger (and his or her institution) and boosts their reputation above economists with similar publication records. Finally, a blog can transform attitudes about some of the topics it covers.

Thank You

When I first started this blog a year and a half ago, I never expected much to come out of it. My goal was just to have a forum for airing my views and a way to formalise and discipline my thoughts on the economy. I never expected to get the readership that I have now, or to be involved as I am in the online Malaysian community.

Just a few minutes ago, Histats.com reports that since 1 April 2009, Economics Malaysia has hit the 100,000 page views milestone. That’s a heck of a lot of traffic for a specialist blog like this.

So for all my visitors and followers, thank you. I hope you’ve derived some benefit from my doodlings – I’ve certainly enjoyed the process.

I’m especially grateful for those who have put my blog on their blogroll, particularly Rocky, Dato’ Sak, Dali, de Minimis, etheorist and SatD. Couldn’t have done it without you.

And to my wife, thanks for the encouragement and for not complaining too much about the time I spend on line. Love you, babe.

Why Am I Blogging?

[This is a long post, so feel free to jump to the end. You’ll miss a lot of fun stuff if you do though]

A few weeks ago, Kartik Athreya of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond delivered a harsh attack on the economics blogosphere:

Economics is Hard. Don’t Let Bloggers Tell You Otherwise

The following is a letter to open-minded consumers of the economics blogosphere. In the wake of the recent financial crisis, bloggers seem unable to resist commentating routinely about economic events. It may always have been thus, but in recent times, the manifold dimensions of the financial crisis and associated recession have given fillip to something bigger than a cottage industry. Examples include Matt Yglesias, John Stossel, Robert Samuelson, and Robert Reich. In what follows I will argue that it is exceedingly unlikely that these authors have anything interesting to say about economic policy. This sounds mean-spirited, but it’s not meant to be, and I’ll explain why.