Econtalk

… other than reading our blog, of course.

I was writing up something for my graduating seniors about how to keep learning economics after school, and realized I might as well share it with everyone. This may not be the best way to do things, it is simply what I do, and I think it works reasonably well.

Blogs by Economists: There are many good ones, but besides ours Marginal Revolution is the only one where I aim to read every post

Economic News: WSJ or Bloomberg

Podcasts on the Economy: NPR’s The Indicator (short, makes abstract concepts concrete), Bloomberg’s Odd Lots (deeper dives on subjects that move financial markets)

Podcasts by Economists: Conversations with Tyler and Econtalk (note that both often cover topics well outside of economics). Macro Musings goes the other way and stays super focused on monetary policy.

Twitter/X: This is a double-edged sword, or perhaps even a ring of power that grants the wearer great abilities even as it corrupts them. The fastest way to get informed or misinformed and angry, depending on who you follow and how you process information. Following the people I do gives you a fighting chance, but even this no guarantee; even assuming you totally trust my judgement, sometimes I follow people because they are a great source on one issue, even though I think they are wrong on lots of other things. Still, by revealed preference, I spend more time reading here than other single source.

Finance/Investing: Making this its own category because it isn’t exactly economics. Matt Levine has a column that somehow makes finance consistently interesting and often funny; unlike the rest of Bloomberg, you can subscribe for free. He also now has a podcast. If you’d like to run money yourself some day, try Meb Faber’s podcast. If you’d like things that touch on finance and economics but with more of a grounding in real-world business, try the Invest Like the Best podcast or The Diff newsletter.

Economics Papers: You can get a weekly e-mail of the new papers in each field you like from NBER. But most econ papers these days are tough to read even for someone with an undergrad econ degree (often even for PhDs). The big exception is the Journal of Economic Perspectives, which puts in a big effort to make its papers actually readable.

Books: This would have to be its own post, as there are too many specific ones to recommend, and I don’t know that I have any general principle of how to choose.

This is a lot and it would be crazy to just read all the same things I do, but I hope you will look into the things you haven’t heard of, and perhaps find one or two you think are worth sticking with. Also happy to hear your suggestions of what I’m missing.

Some economists love to write about sports because they love sports. Others love to write about sports because the data are so good compared to most other facets of the economy. What other industry constantly releases film of workers doing their jobs, and compiles and shares exhaustive statistics about worker performance?

This lets us fill the pages of the Journal of Sports Economics with articles on players’ performance and pay, and articles evaluating strategies that sometimes influence how sports are played in turn. But coaches always struck me as harder to evaluate than players or strategies. With players, the eye test often succeeds.

To take an extreme example, suppose an average high-school athlete got thrown into a professional football or basketball game; a fan asked to evaluate them could probably figure out that they don’t belong there within minutes, or perhaps even just by glancing at them and seeing they are severely undersized. But what if an average high school coach were called up to coach at the professional level? How long would it take for a casual observer to realize they don’t belong? You might be able to observe them mismanaging games within a few weeks, but people criticize professional coaches for this all the time too; I think you couldn’t be sure until you see their record after a season or two. Even then it is much less certain than for a player- was their bad record due to their coaching, or were they just handed a bad roster to work with?

The sports economics literature seems to confirm my intuition that coaches are difficult to evaluate. This is especially true in football, where teams generally play fewer than 20 games in a season; a general rule of thumb in statistics is that you need at least 20 to 25 observations for statistical tests to start to work. This accords with general practice in the NFL, where it is considered poor form to fire a coach without giving him at least one full season. One recent article evaluating NFL coaches only tries to evaluate those with at least 3 seasons. If the article is to be believed, it wasn’t until 2020 that anyone published a statistical evaluation of NFL defensive coordinators, despite this being considered a vital position that is often paid over a million dollars a year:

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