Sunday, January 25, 2009

Joshua Gans is getting serious

(I've never seen him that well dressed)

Until Monday Joshua Gans was a solo blogger

(like John Quiggin and Andrew Leigh before he took time out to work at the Treasury)

Now he's part of a team

(like Nicholas Gruen)

As he said, "not only is it change you can believe in, it is change that is here, right now and at least a day before the other change".

"Core Economics is going multi-author. There will be eight, regular and semi-regular writers. All of them are academics and most are economists. Let me introduce them to you..."

Stephen King is my long-time collaborator and has, for the past four and a half years, been a commissioner with the ACCC. Today, he takes up a new post as Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at Monash University and so is now free to comment publicly on all issues. Stephen is also returning today as my business partner at CoRE Research. Despite his administrative duties, I expect Stephen will be a daily contributor to the blog.

Mark Crosby is an associate professor in economics at Melbourne Business School. Mark specialises in macroeconomics and we definitely need more of that expertise right now. Mark also is a regular commentator in the media.

Kwanghui Lim is a senior lecturer in strategy at Melbourne Business School. Kwang is not an economist but it is hard to tell from the rigour of his research. Kwang specialises in technology strategy and entrepreneurship and has a vast working knowledge of technical issues related to IT. Kwang will add to the technology commentary that I dabble in on this blog.

Sam Wylie is a senior fellow at Melbourne Business School and a specialist in banking and finance. He has been a regular commentator in the Australian media during the financial crisis and I imagine will continue to provide that commentary here.

All of these authors reside in Australia. But I also figured that some Australians who were academics abroad might, from time to time, want to comment on Australian issues. Happily three of them have agreed to become authors at Core Economics:

Richard Holden is an assistant professor in economics at Chicago's Booth School of Business. Richard specialises in contract theory and applied game theory. His undergraduate education was from the University of Sydney.

Christine Neill is an assistant professor in economics at Wilfrid Laurier University (Ontario, Canada), where she spends most of her research time studying university financing, student aid policies, and individual's education decisions. Like me, she gained her undergraduate education at the University of Queensland and also, like me, she is a co-author of Andrew Leigh.

Justin Wolfers is an associate professor of economics in the Business and Public Policy Department at the Wharton School. Unlike everyone else added today, he is no stranger to blogging, holding a treasured regular slot on the New York Times Freakonomics blog. Core Economics will provide an outlet for Justin to comment on Australian issues as he has done so often in the media in the past."


Wow! It's way serious competition. Which is great.