This page explains how to get the most out of this site, its purpose and mission, the Five Great Questions around which the site is organized, the Web log format, my main sources, and the searchable archive. For more information about me, go to my main home page.
Your input is crucial. Refer me to articles, offer support or criticism for my opinions, and make suggestions for the site. Send ideas to arnold at arnoldkling dot com
Although this site is readable under any browser, the intended layout is based on style sheet standards that are best supported by Internet Explorer 5.0 and greater.
If you have been referred to a particular post (item) on this site, then you can use the searchable archive to enter the post number in order to find the page that has the post. The searchable archive also allows you to search by keyword if you do not know the post number.
If you link to this site, please link to the main page, at http://arnoldkling.com/gqe/index.html
If you want to refer someone to a particular post (item) on the web log, please include the post number, which is the left-most number in the list of data next to a post. For example, to refer to the post about Hal Varian's "High tech will rise again" article, you would refer the reader to post number 7.
The purpose of this site is to provide an open resource pertaining to economic issues that is geared toward an introductory level. The target audience includes teachers and students of introductory economics, journalists, and interested citizens. In addition to pointers to relevant articles, I will provide editorial judgment and perspective.
If I were to position this site relative to competitors (a tactic that I advocate in my book, Under The Radar), they might include:
Paul Krugman's columns in the New York Times.
I like the fact that they are on current economic issues. However, I do not feel that they do a good job of conveying professional economic thinking.
Bernie Saffran's "Suggestions for further reading" in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. I like the relevance that many of his suggestions have for teachers of introductory economics. However, it suffers a bit from a traditional quarterly journal's publication lag. In any event, my intent is to be much less eclectic than Bernie.
Other economics web sites, such as Brad DeLong's or Hal Varian's Information Economy web site.
I like the topics on these sites. GQE will have numerous links to the Web writings of these two economists, as well as others.
However, neither site has exactly the target audience, choice of topics, and design philosophy that I have in mind for this site.
Standard economics textbooks
A good textbook is well organized and polished. However, textbooks must cede a lot to tradition and to the need to please the existing teaching constituency. GQE will be more free to innovate and to take risks.
My personal goal is to make this site popular for users. In my view, visitors to the site impose no marginal cost, so they will not be charged, nor will they be subjected to advertising. To the extent that I derive income related to the site, it will come from teaching and speaking.
The site will be organized around what I call the five great questions of economics (GQE). For data classification purposes, I assign each question a short nickname.
| Short name | Question | Economic Topics |
|---|---|---|
| richpoor | How did we get to be so rich, and what can we do about poverty? | Growth Theory, Development Economics |
| markets | Why are markets good, and when is regulation constructive? | Microeconomics |
| saving | How should we save and invest for the future? | Finance, Public Finance |
| macro | How can we avoid macroeconomic problems, such as hyperinflation, long periods of high unemployment, or international financial crises? | Macroeconomics |
| infoecon | How can we deal with the fact that so much of what we value can now be redistributed and re-used at no cost? To put it simply, information wants to be free but people need to get paid. | Economics of Information |
I have a page with more background information about the Great Questions.
The Web log, or Blog, became a phenomenon in 1999, fueled to a large degree by blogger.com. The typical Blog is a web-based diary maintained by one person, usually including relevant links. Most Blogs are informal. I used Blogger for The Internet Bubble Monitor.
In 2001, particularly after the World Trade Center attacks, a more political type of Blog became popular. Examples include Virginia Postrel, Greg Reynolds (Instapundit), and Andrew Sullivan.
Other conservative/libertarian Bloggers jointed this community. I would like to see a community of economics Bloggers develop, also!Lawrence Lee's Tomalak's Realm is a Blog that influenced my thinking heavily. Lee trolls the Web looking for articles related to e-commerce and presents links and quotes in a Blog format.
As with Tomalak's Realm and many Blogs, I will focus the GQE Blog on links of interest. Just as I check Tomalak's Realm every day, I hope that my readers will find my selections and commentary sufficiently valuable that you choose to check GQE every day.
Here are the sites that I review regularly to obtain ideas for the Web Log (many of these are mentioned above).
| 1 | richpoor | 1-5-02 | Katz | longevity | infant mortality | life expectancy |
For each item in the blog, you will see some data, as illustrated. This is used to make the archive searchable. The first element in the data is a number to identify the item. The second element is the question nickname. The third element is the date posted. Then there are four keywords.
Readers are welcome to contribute suggestions for background material as well as for the web log. Send comments or suggestions to arnold at arnoldkling dot com, which I have written out in order to try to avoid detection by automated programs.
Arnold Kling