What is TheBumblebee? A bumblebee is something that is not supposed to fly, according to science. But it does. There are many things around us that are similar. Science at first cannot explain them. Or they do not seem realistic according to our priors. Our priors are the theories we have of the world in our head. Economics is similar sometimes. Some things happen contrary to popular theory.
There is a specific bumblebee in Europe of course – people who follow European economic policy debates know which one is it, and for the rest, let‘s keep it a mystery for now. So this blog is going to be mostly about two things – economics more broadly and the European Union more concretely. I will try to make the posts here readable in one breath. This will inadvertently mean I fail to mention important people, articles, viewpoints and contributions, and I hope there will be no retributions for that. A blog post is like a model. It is necessary a simplification of reality and in that it misses something – an important argument, evidence or some context of an issue. But we live in times where immense amount of knowledge is being produced. It often feels we are overproducing new results in economics (due to how incentives are structured) without paying attention to actually understanding the current base of consensus. I will be humbly trying to make sense of it here.
This blog came into existence after two of my closest people advised me, completely separately from each other, that I should start writing online on the topics I have been following so thoroughly in the past 10 years. It seemed like a wild coincidence so I decided to take upon it. I will try to summarize the latest from economic research, but also keep up to date with current economic policy topics. I will try to do my best to start with very simplified explanations of the things I am writing about, so that also people from all professions can follow and use this blog. I will aim at writing about topics I have been following for some years now and while I try to be impartial and objective, we all have our small inevitable biases. To be cautious of that, Thomas Phillipon‘s magnificient book “The Great Reversal” well summarizes the dangers of listening to economic commentators:
“Unlike some who write about controversial topics in economics or in other fields, I readily admit that I don’t have all the answers. In much of the writing on economics and society today, the tone is certain and prescriptive. The problems are obvious and predictably, so are the solutions. … I would suggest, however, that such prescriptions be taken with a (large) grain of salt. When you read an author or commentator who tells you something is obvious, take your time and do the math. Almost every time, you’ll discover that it wasn’t really obvious at all.
“People who tell you that the answers to the big questions in economics are obvious are telling you only half of the story. More often than not, they think that either because they have an agenda or don't really know what they are talking about. So be sceptical - always"
We shall all be following these wise words, especially when economic decisions that all of us make everyday often affect not only us, but the whole society. So this blog will also be about general equilibrium effects and externalities. Your decisions have direct repercussions not only for you, but also indirect effects on others. And vice versa - very often our commonly understood views on the world come from some old and distant theory, deeply embedded in out culture, traditions or institutions. In the words of Keynes:
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”
I will be trying to make some sense of all of these along the lines of this blog.
Stay for the ride!
(and please, do subscribe, after you have found something interesting here!)
In the meantime, tell your friends!