(Non)Diversity in Econoblogging

The issue of diversity in economic discourse has occupied a prominent place over the past few years. The AEA has had long running initiatives to broaden the diversity of individuals in the economics professions, along gender, racial and ethnic lines, but it’s fair to say they have become much more visible as the debate has waxed: https://www.aeaweb.org/resources/best-practices . The last AEA conference had a panel devoted to the topic of racial diversity (video) . A good summary of the argument for promoting diversity in the economics profession is provided by Janet Yellen. A forceful statement on the economics professions gender diversity problem is here.

What about the EconoBlogosphere (or what remains of it)?

It’s hard for one person to do a comprehensive evaluation, so I’ll use someone else’s tabulation as a launching point: Inomics top economics blogs list, from April 2019. It’s not an exhaustive list by any means (after all, no one’s paying me to hire a RA to do this – conservatives relax!), and leaves out several of my personal favorites.*** (I have a tabulation for Intelligent Economist’s macro group, but the basic message is the same.)

Here’s the list:

  1. Random Observations for Students of Economics
  2. Macro Musings Blog
  3. Mainly Macro
  4. Confessions of a Supply Side Liberal
  5. Marginal Revolution
  6. Conversable Economist
  7. Naked Capitalism
  8. Econbrowser
  9. New Economic Perspectives
  10. Econlib
  11. Econometrics Beat
  12. The Enlightened Economist
  13. Paul Krugman
  14. Real Time Economics
  15. The Intelligent Economist
  16. Economonitor
  17. Thoughts on Economics
  18. The Undercover Economist
  19. Ed Dolan’s Econ Blog
  20. Vox EU
  21. Worthwhile Canadian Initiative
  22. Lars P. Syll

I omit Real Time Economics and Economonitor which are not standalone, and VoxEU which is a web portal. Intelligent Economist is also excluded as I have no demographic information.

I have tabulated 29 individuals for 18 blogs (so some blogs have multiple contributors). I don’t include all the bloggers as some seem inactive on some of the blogs.

To re-iterate: I don’t think this is a representative sample. But I think most “top blogs” lists would share similar attributes with this one.

This is the breakdown in several pie charts.

Most of the bloggers are US centered (they might not be US citizens, but focus on the US economy). They’re mostly male, and mostly white, as shown in the below figures.

The share of males in the sample seems disproportionate to the share of males in the economics profession, when the share of females starting Ph.D.’s is about 1/3. This NYT article highlights some of the trends. If I restricted the sample to the US, then the sample would be 100% male. I could write at some length speculating on the this phenomenon, but I’m not a sociologist. Claudia Sahm speculated back in 2016 (via Mark Thoma, since the original post is gone). Suffice to say, there is a notable lack of diversity along the gender dimension.

There are no blacks in the sample — indeed non-white is 3% (i.e., me).

Most, but not all, have economics Ph.D.’s. More interestingly, a noticeable one-third have experience in the government. See my discussion of the econoblogosphere back in 2007. The (bad?) habits acquired during government service still seems to motivate some bloggers.

Now, if you thought that there was an “elite” domination of blogging, I can’t really address that question (some people seem to have an expansive definition of elite). I can figure out how many have an “Ivy League” education. Here’s the tabulation:

I didn’t tabulate the “mainstream” vs. “heterodox” economists, even though that is in some ways perhaps a central issue of diversity. That’s because “mainstream” and “heterodox” depend somewhat on the eye of the beholder.

So to summarize…mostly male, mostly white — not much different from what I wrote in 2019. I did a tabulation using bloggers in Intelligent Economist’s list, and I find the same pattern.

Now, this may all be moot. Noah Smith points out the golden age of econ blogging is long over. The most vibrant component of rapid-fire economic discourse is on twitter, where my informal assessment is that there is more diversity (although hard to discern on the RePec list).

 

*** Standalone blogs like Calculated Risk, Brad Delong, Jeffrey Frankel, and Angry Bear, affiliated blogs like Follow the Money/Brad Setser (CFR), Noah Smith (Bloomberg), and Macroblog (Atlanta Fed).

 

43 thoughts on “(Non)Diversity in Econoblogging

  1. 2slugbaits

    Menzie Does the category Non Econ PhD refer to someone with a PhD but not in economics, or does it mean someone who blogs about econ but does not have a PhD?

  2. Moses Herzog

    There are about a zillion points I could make here, which would probably get into about 3/4 blathering. My first two immediate/random thoughts on this topic: “Project Syndicate” has a decent amount of content on it and could be viewed as a “blog”. But it also has a lot of premium content, and in my personal view a blog is no longer a blog once it ceases to be FREE. But I know others would argue that.

    Second thought. We can say that society should do more to encourage more female bloggers. And I wouldn’t put up any arguments against that. Perhaps some kind of “yearly Oscars for female bloggers” where they could receive a 4-year scholarship or a large 6 figure monetary prize for 1 year or 2-3 years of solid and regular (2-3 posts per week) content. But I do not think the current system is “unfair”. That is to say something is “unfair” one has to show clear barriers to entry for opening a blog. Does anyone know of any rules inhibiting/preventing women from starting their own blog on “Medium” or “WordPress”, or “Blogspot” or “Wix”?? Where does it say when you register or start up a blog “female bloggers/writers must stop here”??? The women who have their Masters/PhD in Economics/Econoometrics etc must take the initiative. If they don’t want to do it, or prefer to whine about whatever person “wronged” them this last Thursday a la Claudia Sahm, I don’t know how they think that’s going to garner respect. An economics blog is not a personal diary you keep under your bed with a tiny lock on it. Now you can DO that…. (I have done my own personal whining over the internet) but don’t expect loads of respect after you do it. You have to actually START a blog before b*tching that no one cares what you say or that somehow “the system is stacked against me because I have a uterus”. That is the beauty of the internet, there are no bars on who starts a blog (A pretty well-established fact last time I checked….. where David Brooks has been whining for the last 15 years that people who can write 30 times better than him are allowed to start and write on blogs). FTAlphaville is another place we could mention as a blog, there’s no shortage of female bloggers there. I know because I read them all the time. One who comes to mind who wrote an entire piece on how she thought the world was unfair because her mobile phone runs out of power sometimes, just like everyone else’s phone runs out of power. And so, she thought it was unfair bad things like this happened to her. I mean, I almost cried when I found out her mobile phone is like everyone else’s and isn’t a special phone just for her that never runs out of power..

    1. macroduck

      Problem with giving prizes for best female blogger is Belle Waring. Kinda like Serena and Venus in one blogger. Nobody else would ever win.

      1. Moses Herzog

        Ah, you’ve introduced me to someone I wasn’t familiar with (and probably should have been) I will do some reading up on her. But yeah—focusing on the economics.

        I know there are some women economists out there that don’t get their due. There was a Asian Indian girl I was quite impressed with, wrote a lot of development stuff. Her writing was super good, but she was only posting every 2 months or so, because she was busy doing her own research which the writing would have taken away from. All the regulars here know I’m a huge Gopinath fan and she does have a “blog” but her IMF duties kind of kill off any regular posting there. “AOC” does semi-regular streams on Youtube (not really an “economist” but can speak intelligently on it). I’m left wondering if “AOC” finds the time for streams maybe some of these other women can do a blog if they actually want to, instead of just saying “well, I can’t”. You know, again, if they have to be “encouraged” to do something, then fine, but I don’t see any obstruction here to women who want to write blogs, sorry, I don’t see it.

    2. Bruce Hall

      Moses, before I’m accused of spoofing your identity, I want to say clearly that I did not write your comment. You used three words that precisely identify the issue: a person (male or female) has to “take the initiative”. Part of taking the initiative is having an interest and confidence in sharing one’s viewpoint and being held up to either praise of scorn. It may be more difficult for a woman to start an economics blog, not because of opportunity or capability, but because of the fear that if she doesn’t measure up to the best, she will be held up as proof that women are less capable (since she is a rare example).

      I have found the same scarcity of women bloggers in the climate science arena. One major exception is Judith Curry who is an outspoken heretic among climate alarmists. In any other field, she would be judged as reasonable and competent, but she gets flak because she is not following the crowd or questions the dogma. https://judithcurry.com/

      Netflix has an interesting series called “The Queen’s Gambit” which is a fascinating study of both interest and “taking the initiative”. I highly recommend it.

  3. Barkley Rosser

    Well, Econospeak did not make the Inomics list, but is on the longer Intelligent Economist list, somehow put into the finance section. All of our contributors are white male, with everybody having a PhD. But I am not quite sure how many worked in governmnet, and several people officially there do not post or do so infrequently. Anyway, we are not diverse.

    1. Moses Herzog

      @ Barkley Rosser
      How many efforts have you made to invite female economists to “officially” be there??~~~ or even extended invitations for female economists to “guest post”?? Can you give examples or name one female economist you extended the invitation to?? You must have some female colleagues at James Madison you’ve asked?? Graduate students?? Even if you don’t have sole control of Econospeaks, I doubt if they would block you from posting a female guest contributor in one of your own posts.

      You could offer a non class credit project at the start of the term for female students, with a $500–$1000 savings bond (or whatever) attached, to the female student with the best blog essay/ research paper, to be decided by a panel of Econospeaks official members or a 3 person Econ faculty panel at James Madison. I think if it’s non-class credit it rewards personal initiative, but takes away male students’ ability to say they are being treated unfair—as it’s a project offered external to the class itself.

      1. Barkley Rosser

        Moses,

        I am not in charge of Econospeak, even if I am probably the best known person who officially posts there. One of the two most frequent commenters there is almost certainly female, a person who was also one of the most frequent commenters on the former Economists View blog. After it ended she more or less migrated to Econospeak but also regularly comments on Angry Bear, if less frequently than on Econospeak. I do not know if she has an econ PhD or not, although I am inclined to think not. Since you used to follow EV, I think you know whom I am talking about, with her level of frequent posting making her a de facto official poster. She is a super data wonk.

        Recently one of the other official posters has been posting Open Threads for her and the other most frequent commenter to post their comments, with some of those threads going up to 50 or more comments, almost entirely things by the two of them. This is partly due to both of them regularly posting comments and followups unrelated to official thread topics, rather like you do here, Moses.

        Actually, now that I think of it, we did have one official poster there who was female for awhile, but she got tired of it and left. She may still be officially on the list but simply has not posted anything in several years, although she occasionally made comments, usually on my posts, after she stopped regularly posting herself, but has stopped doing that recently also. Indeed, there are several people who used to officially post but have not done so for a long time, and I do not know if they are still officially on the list or if they officially withdrew. As I said, I am not in charge of it and have not kept track of who is officially on and who is officially off. In the last year or so, there have been 5 people who have officially posted there, with one of those very infrequently and only 2 quite frequently, with the person officially in charge never posting.

        I have several female colleagues, but none of them seem interested in posting on blogs at all. As far as students go, I do let them know at beginning of semester that I post there, but otherwise do not talk about it in class, partly because I have an antique view of keeping overt political discussions out of my class presentations, with there being a lot of such discussions on Econospeeak as there are here, frankly viewing openly advocating political positions in a class as unprofessional, even as many of my colleagues do it, which I defend out of academic freedom. . I have had former students comment there, identifying themselves, while I have never had a current student openly comment there, although I know this semester there is one following it who has asked me about some things on it during office hours.

        Should we be worrying about racial or ethnic diversity as well as gender diversity, since you are handing out instructions here about what we are supposed to do?

        1. Moses Herzog

          @ Barkley Rosser
          I was checking to see if your actions verified your phony theatrical concern over females in your profession and in general. Thanks for confirming my suspicions. Other than your claim of being the most well known person there, your milquetoast “defense” of not making much attempt on this front seems to ring highly accurate. Accuracy is a rare quality for your blog comments, so this aspect of your comment was refreshing. Though the fact you couldn’t mention a single female’s name you invited to write on Econospeak seems……. disappointing even for you…….. though not wholly unexpected.

          BTW, I knew you’d be the first to shoot down my idea (however unoriginal it is) of a monetary incentive or educational scholarship to encourage women to participate in hosting economics blogs. Obviously coming up with suggestions or brainstorming on a solution to this is of low priority to you when it has zero value in drawing attention towards yourself. I would have bet the bank that you would pooh pooh or deride that idea. And you did. As again, that would require action in persuading women to feel welcome on the blog front, rather than phony platitudes which you specialize in when you have any small scent that it will draw attention towards yourself.

          1. Barkley Rosser

            Um, Moses, did you get the point that I am not in charge of Econospeak? Also, whom do you think I should be approaching about providing these monies? You want me to do it? Sorry, not going to do that, even though you seem to think this justifies more perfervid denunciations and accusations littered with all sorts of emobldened words.

            I mentioned nobody’s name, Moses, not just the women. But I know you do not spend time looking at Econospeak because you have denounced it as a worthless blog because I am there, so why should I embarrass the women who have been involved in it by stating their names. Given your history here with women, this would probably just lead you to start denouncing them for eating ice cream or making statements about their ancestry.

            As it is, the woman who was an official poster on Econospeak, and may still be but no longer posts, is somebody who came in because ahe knows me and had been a regular commenter on the old Maxspeak that preceded Econospeak, ant the person in charge invited her in to be an official poster when Econospeak was set up, which she accepted.

            Really, Moses, you are just going to once again make yourself silly trying to make me or Econospeak a bad guy in all this somehow. I have probably done more than most to bring women into the blogosphere, although I am not actively doing anything with that right now, being very busy, frankly. Oh, and the super frequent female commenter on Econospeak, whom I think you are familiar with from Economists View, is there because of me. So, go flush yourself down the nearest toilet, Moses.

          2. Moses Herzog

            @ Barkley Junior
            Please don’t misunderstand, I myself have been personally moved and touched, and had life changing experiences just from reading some of your posts Junior:
            http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2019/08/have-we-been-blocked.html

            For the record, I never denounced Econospeak as useless, but I’ll let you speak for the blog yourself Junior. NO ONE is a better ambassador for the core messages of Econospeak than you Junior, and you are “the most well known” (according to pop culture guru Barkley Junior) of those hosting the blog. Masterful

  4. joseph

    An outstanding addition is Raphael Bostic, the first black Federal Reserve Bank president. He would be an great Biden appointment for Federal Reserve Chairman.

    Here are two important papers he has written:

    A Moral and Economic Imperative to End Racism
    https://www.frbatlanta.org/about/feature/2020/06/12/bostic-a-moral-and-economic-imperative-to-end-racism

    The Benefits of a Diverse and Inclusive Recovery
    https://www.frbatlanta.org/news/speeches/2020/10/19/bostic-benefits-of-a-diverse-and-inclusive-recovery.aspx

    1. macroduck

      Bostic’s research has focused on housing, not monetary policy or macro in general. Not sure housing is the best window into Fed policy making. On the other hand, Powell isn’t an economist and he seems to be handling the job OK.

      1. Moses Herzog

        I’m not necessarily against checking some “PC” or “SJW” check boxes. But it doesn’t help when you choose people who aren’t suitable or capable of that specific job. You actually provide more ammunition to racists when you nominate “group X” just to nominate group X and they fail. Does anyone intelligent not believe what really annoys white trash Republicans about President Obama was that he was/is articulate, that he was/is Harvard educated, that he didn’t fail at performing the duties of his office satisfactorily (aside from the mortgage cramdowns)??? THAT is why they hate President Obama—because he didn’t fail doing his job. It pains them deeply. Because the next black candidate for President, NOW, has a shining example to say “Look~~~a black man CAN do the job–and do the job WELL”.

        Lael Brainard checks the “PC” checkbox AND she’s nearly perfect for the job. Taking 10 Black names, writing their names on a small slip of paper, mixing them into a hat and pulling one out?? Doomed for failure~~~and hurts the legit black candidate when he arrives.

  5. Moses Herzog

    Some people don’t like Reddit. I think people kind of view it as the evil lovechild of Twitter and 4chan. But I think Aaron Swartz was a great young man and had good intentions for it, so that is the light thereby I choose to view Reddit in, by Aaron Swartz’s original intentions, and his hope of it improving the world. Maybe if the FBI didn’t enjoy threatening bright lights of the world in order to aggrandize themselves Aaron Swartz would have been a much improved version of Steve Jobs. I don’t put much Reddit stuff up here, because there is a lot of “borderline”/”marginal” content. But it does attract original thinkers, and people attracted to different paths. In that perspective I offer the following Reddit content:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/jjr0wk/im_elliott_morris_a_data_journalist_at_the/

    1. Moses Herzog

      @ The Rage
      Making comments on blogs about this is walking on egg shells. Though I believe it is a legitimate topic for conversation. Even Jews argue amongst themselves over this, that is the idea (reality in this case) that Jews can still climb the ranks of power (or upper levels of a profession if you prefer) because they “look white” or can “pass” as white. My personal opinion on this, and yes, subjective opinion is this really doesn’t even pass the sniff test, and I don’t think Lawrence Summers’, Stanley Fischer’s ethnicity and a rather cumbersome laundry list of names we could elucidate, is really a “state secret” and hasn’t hindered them terribly, even though that fact was clearly “out of the box”.

    1. pgl

      Real GDP as of 2020QIII was 3.5% LESS than real GDP as of 2019QIV.

      An easy statistic to report and an informative one – right? Then why can’t one damn news outlet report this simple statistic?

  6. pgl

    Ron DeSantis and Scott Atlas hard at work making sure more elderly people in Florida die:

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/29/politics/atlas-desantis-testing-covid-florida/index.html

    Shortly after joining the White House as President Donald Trump’s pandemic adviser, Dr. Scott Atlas launched a quiet effort that seemed counterintuitive to some of his colleagues — encouraging officials to limit Covid-19 testing mainly to people experiencing symptoms. Atlas, a neuroradiologist, not an infectious disease expert, strongly supported a decision in August to revise federal guidelines to de-emphasize the need to test people without symptoms, according to two sources familiar with the process. He shared his view with state officials, including Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and several others in Florida, according to transcripts of public events and accounts from private meetings in that state. During a joint tour on August 31, Atlas and DeSantis urged public health officials in several Florida cities to focus less on universal testing and more on opening the economy and schools. In private and public meetings, according to transcripts and personal accounts, the two spoke in favor of testing people for Covid-19 primarily if they’re experiencing symptoms, a controversial view among epidemiologists …Their push to de-emphasize tests coincided with a dramatic drop in testing across Florida, even as the country was careening toward a fall coronavirus surge. A CNN analysis of the Florida state official numbers, aggregated by the Covid Tracking Project, shows that testing dropped off at the end of July and early August, with a peak seven-day average over 90,000 tests per day on July 18. Six weeks later, in early September, the seven-day average dropped by nearly half, with fewer than 48,000 tests per day, and hovered between there and 60,000 during the fall.If Atlas and DeSantis’ advocacy in Florida is, in fact, responsible for the state’s testing decrease, that would be in keeping with the wishes of Trump, who for months has falsely suggested that the US has so many coronavirus cases only because it conducts so many tests. In June, Trump even said publicly that he wanted to “slow the testing down, please.”   

  7. pgl

    Everyone who needs a laugh should take 2 minutes and listen to the latest lying whining by Tucker Carlson:

    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/tucker-carlson-lost-only-copy-of-documents-nailing-biden.html

    He claims he had documents proving Biden is somehow corrupt from a “reliable” source who of course he did not name. But alas – the only document of these precious got lost in delivery by some evil person at FEDEX. Yes Carlson is always the clown but this episode takes the cake!

    1. Moses Herzog

      I think Tucker Carlson has the same problem in naming reliable sources for his fictional imaginations on Joe Biden, as Barkley Junior has problems thinking of a single female NAME he invited to write regularly (or even make a guest post) on Econospeak. How “strange”………. Well…… Junior doesn’t control the blog, even though he is “the most well known there”.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebanS7YL6V4

  8. Bruce Hall

    Menzie must not like my comments. Oh, well. But just in case it was an oversight and not a case of an overseer, I’ll repeat it.

    Moses, before I’m accused of spoofing your identity, I want to say clearly that I did not write your comment. You used three words that precisely identify the issue: a person (male or female) has to “take the initiative”. Part of taking the initiative is having an interest and confidence in sharing one’s viewpoint and being held up to either praise of scorn. It may be more difficult for a woman to start an economics blog, not because of opportunity or capability, but because of the fear that if she doesn’t measure up to the best, she will be held up as proof that women are less capable (since she is a rare example).

    I have found the same scarcity of women bloggers in the climate science arena. One major exception is Judith Curry who is an outspoken heretic among climate alarmists. In any other field, she would be judged as reasonable and competent, but she gets flak because she is not following the crowd or questions the dogma. https://judithcurry.com/

    Netflix has an interesting series called “The Queen’s Gambit” which is a fascinating study of both interest and “taking the initiative”. I highly recommend it.

    1. Menzie Chinn Post author

      Bruce Hall: I reserve right to hold on to any comment, particularly with links, for 24 hours, as per Jim Hamilton’s original note on this comment approval policy 16 years ago (there are still a couple from today that are languishing because there are links imbedded). If you have any complaint that any comment of yours has been held back for more than 24 hours (and did not exhibit profanity, racism, or misogyny which are reasons for deletion), please tell me.

      1. Moses Herzog

        I wish to express that although my thoughts on gender issues have been scrutinized on this blog, by thoughts on gender topics don’t mirror Bruce Hall’s. I like to think/assume Menzie knows there is a difference there, but I wish to state that to make the record abundantly clear.

      2. Barkley Rosser

        Ah, I see that only “profanity, racism, and misogyny” are grounds for having comments deleted, not libel.

        1. Menzie Chinn Post author

          Barkley Rosser: If that were, a quarter of the comments would be deleted. I would’ve deleted most of the comments by Ed Hanson, Patrick R. Sullivan, rtd, and all the others who claim I’m either receiving two paychecks from UW, or that I’m a Marxist.

          1. Moses Herzog

            WOW, I almost forgot about “rtd”. My memory is not as sharp as it used to be, and there’s too many name acronyms to keep track of. But “rtd” was a real SOB wasn’t he?? You could tell he was always hovering and then say something just to prod people. He was like the troll’s troll. “rtd” may be the only one worse than Stryker as far as the only reason he shows up is to hard poke people in their lower ribs.

            Barkley, do you need a bandage, a handkerchief, or both??? Let’s all just guess who Barkley is whining about that he can’t get their comments filtered after lobbying someone. The greatest personal honor I have received on this blog~~almost better than my unachieved dream of being mentioned in a positive light in a Menzie post??~~~Barkley Junior admitting he’d ban me from this blog if he could. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to having a wet dream while reading this blog. Once again proving that the people who lash out at others like a 6 year old have skin as thin as cheap cheap cigarette paper. I stand together with Devin Nunes’ Cow.
            https://lawandcrime.com/opinion/devin-nunes-determined-to-keep-filing-lawsuits-that-he-has-no-hope-of-winning/

          2. Barkley Rosser

            Menzie,

            I appreciate that you are very tolerant.

            I also understand that we have all become extremely stressed due to the upcoming election, which really will be past us now very soon. Hopefully there will be a clear outcome, and one a lot of us like, so we can mellow out at least somewhat. I think many of us are not fully aware of how the general social stress coming from the Trump admin and this race has really gotten us all a bit crazy, folks on both sides of the political split.

            I actually think looking at the forecasts, that this is a fat tails moment: the probability of Trump winning is higher than most think, somewhat about the 12% or so Silver has put out there, thanks both to the enthusiasm of his followers and the possibility of the stacked legal system getting in there and helping Trump out, although I consider it to be less than the 60% Moses and Stryker are proclaiming. However, i also think the probability of it going the other way is also higher than many think with the a serious landslide against Trump highly probable. Indeed, although I hesitate to say it, landslide is what I smell, my intuitive gut feel. Four years ago I smelled a Trump vitory the minute I heard that announcement by Comey 11 days before the election.

            To Moses: still waiting to learn your second quarter “shape” forecast for GDP, the one that must be kept as secret as Trump’s tax returns.

          3. Moses Herzog

            @ Barkley Junior
            Based on your opinions of my personal honesty, you shouldn’t trust my contention that I sent any such e-mail on June 25th to anyone, containing my thoughts on what the shape of the recovery would be. Neither does there exist anyone who could confirm receiving that email. And just as if I was sending Benjamin Willard that email, he could neither confirm nor deny that mission ever existed.

    2. pgl

      “Menzie must not like my comments.”

      We LOVE your comments. It is called comic relief. As in the dumbest things ever written!

    3. baffling

      a person (male or female) has to “take the initiative”
      bruce hall, this is the typical response from the old white man who had absolutely no barriers to their career compared to minorities and women trying to break down walls. a number of years ago i would have even agreed with you. but life experience has shown that your argument is false. i have seen this played out first hand. opportunities are not equally available, and some people have a much easier path due to their ethnicity, race and gender. this is a fact. you seem to be in denial of this bruce. privilege can be blinding. just ask donald’s family.
      bruce, you may be welcome to disagree with any remedies to this problem. but you are not entitled to deny its existence.

  9. ltr

    It may be more difficult for a woman to start an economics blog, not because of opportunity or capability, but because of the fear that if she doesn’t measure up to the best, she will be held up as proof that women are less capable (since she is a rare example)….

    [ Precisely the way in which prejudice is repeatedly justified and sustained. ]

  10. Moses Herzog

    When my comp went down I lost track of some bloggers I used to follow semi-regular. Thomas Levenson was one of my favorite bloggers not specializing in finance or economics. It appears he’s gone dormant on his original blog, but apparently still writes for The Atlantic magazine sparingly. For anyone who is a Thomas Levenson fan I give you the following:
    https://www.theatlantic.com/feed/author/thomas-levenson/

  11. Trilce Navarrete

    Would you consider the EconomistsTalkArt.org blog in your sample? this has a notable gender / geo diversity of contributors (besides the editors)

      1. Moses Herzog

        Damnded Edjoomuhkated and tolerant eleedists. I knew wen Tuker Karson done did said weez koodn’t trust you, weez done did koodn’t trust yooz. This extreez treezonist taking up of blawg space is a vilashion of me first amendment rits and a damnded travis tee. I had to done did say that, I am not affeerd of you edjoomuhkated eleedists.

        Signed 1st kuhzin to Mitch McConnell, Klevis McConnnell

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