Marginal Revolution
Encyclopedia
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
focused on economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
run by economists Tyler Cowen
Tyler Cowen
Tyler Cowen is an American economist, academic, and writer. He occupies the Holbert C. Harris Chair of economics as a professor at George Mason University and is co-author, with Alex Tabarrok, of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution...
and Alex Tabarrok
Alex Tabarrok
Alexander Taghi Tabarrok is a Canadian-American economist and co-author, with Tyler Cowen, of the economics blog Marginal Revolution....
, both of whom teach at George Mason University
George Mason University
George Mason University is a public university based in unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, south of and adjacent to the city of Fairfax. Additional campuses are located nearby in Arlington County, Prince William County, and Loudoun County...
. The blog's slogan is "Small steps toward a much better world." The site is updated daily and focuses on current events and newly released reports or books. The "small steps" advocated by the slogan are usually free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
–based policies, ranging from new forms of property rights to following the results of behavioral economics studies. As of July 2005, Marginal Revolution had a BlogPulse rank of 88, the highest of any economics blog.
Several of the blog's postings by Cowen were revised and published together in the 2007 book Discover Your Inner Economist.
"Continuing Series"
Some articles follow common themes, including "Markets in Everything", which is news about offbeat and nontraditional goods or services that are traded; "Area fact of the day," which covers surprising news about a given city or country; since the global financial crisis began "The Countercyclical Asset", which records products and services that thrive in a recession; "What I've Been Reading", a list of books the author has read recently, with a short review and sales link; "My Favourite things [Area]", which lists the best cultural offerings from a particular province, city or country, and formerly "Claims my Russian wife laughs at," which is about the differences between an economist's outlook on life versus that of a non-economist from a different continent and culture.Status on comments
In the comments controversy of the economics blogosphereBlogosphere
The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community or as a social network in which everyday authors can publish their opinions...
, where some economics blogs (such as EconLog) allow comments on every post, while others (such as Tim Harford
Tim Harford
Tim Harford is an English economist and journalist, residing in London. He is the author of four economics books, presenter of BBC television series Trust Me, I'm an Economist, and writer of a humorous weekly column called "Dear Economist" for The Financial Times, in which he uses economic theory...
's website) have no comment function. For the first few years of its existence, Marginal Revolution only opened the Comments section on selected posts. Tyler Cowen's explanation, given September 15, 2005, was that regular availability of comments causes a lower quality than periodic availability; when the poster (Cowen or Tabarrok) sets his own course, he can choose to solicit comments when the subject "involves particular facts and decentralized knowledge". This is an attempt to allow an accretion of previously unknown data and informed opinions on more esoteric subjects while avoiding repetitive flame wars on subjects such as "evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
, free will
Free will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
, or Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...
". However, since at least early 2008, the comments have been open for every Marginal Revolution post.
Guest bloggers
Guest bloggers have included Robin HansonRobin Hanson
Robin D. Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He is known as an expert on idea futures, markets and was involved in the creation of the Foresight Exchange and DARPA's FutureMAP...
, Tim Harford
Tim Harford
Tim Harford is an English economist and journalist, residing in London. He is the author of four economics books, presenter of BBC television series Trust Me, I'm an Economist, and writer of a humorous weekly column called "Dear Economist" for The Financial Times, in which he uses economic theory...
, Steven Landsburg
Steven Landsburg
Steven E. Landsburg is an American professor of economics at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. From 1989 to 1995, he taught at Colorado State University.-Education:...
, Fabio Rojas, James Surowiecki
James Surowiecki
James Michael Surowiecki is an American journalist. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes a regular column on business and finance called "The Financial Page".-Background:...
, Bryan Caplan
Bryan Caplan
Bryan Caplan is an American economist, a Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center, adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute, and blogger for Econlog. He is best known for his work in public choice theory and for his libertarian ideology.-Personal...
and Justin Wolfers
Justin Wolfers
Justin Wolfers is an Australian-American economist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a contributor to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and an editor of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity...
.