Econ Bloggers: Slide-Rule Celebrities

Marginal Revolution mentions an article from today's LA Times Business Section, about how "economists who author blogs are drawing fans who see nothing dismal about the discipline." The article features the blog Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok at George Mason), and blogs by Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker and federal appeals court judge Richard A. Posner, former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, and Chicago economist Steven Levitt (co-author of Freakonomics).

From the article:

Econo-fans are responding, Becker figures, because the blogs put important pocketbook issues into understandable language. Whereas former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan had "Greenspeak" — the carefully convoluted jargon whose comprehensibility rivaled that of Klingon — the blogs connect economics to daily life.

"Most people are afraid of economics. It seems so technical," Becker said. "But what is surprising is that if you put economics in a simple enough phrase, people are very much interested in it."