List of UK economics blogs


I haven't found a list of UK-based economics blogs out there, so I thought I'd make one. Alphabetical order by name of blog:
  • 2UBH: low-volume blog on economics among other things. By Tim Chapman
  • Adam Smith Institute: highly free-market, not especially UK-focused subject matter but based in London
  • Adam Smith's Lost Legacy: Free-market oriented economics blog written in Edinburgh, at the moment mainly providing commentary on other blogs
  • Alex Singleton: Politics and economics within the Telegraph blogs stable
  • Bluematter: Interesting links to economic and political news, and occasionally some analysis too
  • Business Angel Blog: by charter, it's not about economics - but like many business blogs, it has crept recently into the more exciting territory of discussing the economic crisis
  • Capital Chronicle: This isn't UK-based, but the author has some UK history and writes about British news frequently. The phrase "mustn't grumble" tips the balance
  • Cautious Bull: thoughtful commentary on stockmarket investment and related issues.
  • Clive Crook (FT): Not really economics, but his politics touches on the economy often enough that I'll include it
  • Daily Telegraph Economics Pulse: The Telegraph blog, filtered to economics articles
  • Economics Help: A site explaining some basic concepts in economics and relating them to the news
  • Economics UK: written by David Smith (economics editor of the Sunday Times) and contains his Sunday Times columns as well as some other, mainstream-for-UK-economists-type writing
  • Economists' Forum (FT): columns by major economists, broadly discussing economic policy, edited by Martin Wolf and including his own FT columns
  • Economonkey: Doesn't the name say it all? No? A rather sarcastic and entertaining discussion of economic news
  • Enlightened Economist: A blog about economics books by Diane Coyle (former economics editor of the Independent) - not quite full reviews, but useful discursion on new and old economics authors and texts
  • The Filter: Disseminates academic ideas and research for a mainstream audience, in a readable way. It covers various subjects but I have linked to the economics subset, written mainly by Anthony Evans who is a lecturer at the ESCP-EAP business school.
  • Flip Chart Fairy Tales: Strictly speaking, perhaps more business than economics, but definitely touching on macroeconomic issues
  • Free Exchange: The Economist's blog - not particularly UK-focused but published from the UK
  • Global Economics and Structures: a blog about the global economy and international institutions and structures, written in the UK
  • Globalisation and the Environment: while this is about global issues, it seems to be mainly from a UK perspective
  • Globalisation Institute: their site seems to have gone AWOL for now - I will check again later. However, see Alex Singleton above
  • Idle Scrawl: blog from Paul Mason, economics editor of Newsnight. Covers the latest news and gives some macroeconomic analysis. If he posts a bit more frequently, there's no reason why this shouldn't be more popular than Robert Peston - though I think its relative anonymity at present improves the quality of the comments
  • Institute of Economic Affairs: articles from "the UK's original free-market think-tank"
  • JKA on Economics UK: John Ashcroft's blog about the UK economy - most postings contain analysis in response to the latest economic news
  • Knowing and Making: This blog here. Long-term themes are how economics applies to knowledge (intellectual goods), and how knowledge affects economics (through behavioural and mental models). Also with occasional light-hearted economic analyses of the news, and commentary on the economics zeitgeist
  • Labour and Capital: covering the interface between UK politics and economics
  • Macroman: "Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back". A blog about macro data, written by an American in London
  • Maverecon (FT): Willem Buiter's idiosyncratic, famously lengthy, but always thought-provoking blog
  • missmarketcrash: A somewhat poetic narrative on financial markets, the economy and some more personal, introspective ponderings relating to family and self
  • NEF Triple Crunch: A blog from the New Economics Foundation, a think tank
  • New Economist: Miscellaneous economic analysis and comment from a London-based economist. Dormant at the moment - no postings since August 2008
  • Our Word is Our Weapon: Not all economics-related, but enough. Officially about development and social policy, but quite eclectic
  • Oxonomics: Economic analysis from Oxford University
  • Peston's Picks: Technically the BBC's business editor, but most of his postings are about macroeconomic policy
  • The Price of Everything: A mostly finance-oriented blog by Tim Price - noticeably sceptical about government bailouts and the risk of inflation
  • Richard Thinks: Covering current economic/finance news alongside a range of business and knowledge management ideas
  • Stephanomics: The predictably-named successor to Evanomics, this blog is written by Stephanie Flanders, the BBC's economics editor since mid-2008. At time of writing the blog has only just started, but looks to be of good quality - Flanders is an authoritative writer and the prose is in the usual well-written BBC style
  • Stumbling and Mumbling: about politics and economics; particularly criticising managerialism in politics
  • Tim Worstall: a mix of economics and news commentary; hard to classify the economics part
  • Economics In The News: an economics blog from the head of economics at Eton College
  • Undercover Economist (FT): Tim Harford's blog on the economics of everyday life
  • Warwick University: Not exactly a blog so much as an aggregator, but Warwick University has set up a blog platform for its students and staff, and the link points to a collection of posts by everyone in the Economics department
If you have a UK-based economics blog or know of one that I've missed out, please email me or leave a comment. Criteria are: blogs which are predominantly about UK topics and/or written by authors based in the UK. If you write one of the blogs above and would like me to change the description, let me know that too.

In compiling this list I spent much longer than I expected, reading far more economics blogs than I thought I ever would (over 300 of them). Some thoughts from that traumatic experience:
  • It would be great if there were a way to objectively gather trends, key discussion points and consensus views; there's a big danger of being influenced mainly by whatever you read most recently, or whatever confirms your prior assumptions. For example, can Google News be adapted to summarise stories from a specified subset of sites?
  • There seem to be fewer UK blogs than one would expect, considering the population, and the number in the US, Australia, Canada and elsewhere. Is this because the UK is more centralised? I suspect those living in San Francisco or Melbourne who want to talk to their peers in Massachusetts or Canberra use blogs as a convenient channel; while those in London see each other at local seminars or round the pub.
  • This despite the fact that the UK has two of the most-cited economics publications (theFT and The Economist - though perhaps surprisingly, the FT gets a lot more links than the Economist does).
  • Does this explain why the centre of gravity of UK economics blogs is much further to the right than those in the US (and worldwide)? I suspect that in the current political environment, those who hold more free-market and less interventionist views feel outside of the mainstream - and thus are more likely to promulgate their views in blogs than in person at conferences.
  • And just how many blogs does Joshua Gans have??
Paul Ayres at Intute has a quick survey of economics blogs and some ideas on why there may not be so many UK-based economics blogs, and has also written a guide for UK academics about economics blogging.

Latest updates:
15 January 2009: added Enlightened Economist books blog, 2UBH, The Price of Everything, Labour and Capital, JKA on Economics UK and Global Economics and Structures.
24 January 2009: added missmarketcrash, Idle Scrawl and Flip Chart Fairy Tales
28 January 2009: added Stephanomics
8 February 2009: added Richard Thinks
11 February 2009: added The Filter
12 August 2010: added Cautious Bull

Comments

Leigh Caldwell said…
I must have been staring at the screen for so long that when I saw your name for the third and fourth times I failed to realise I'd already looked at the same blog twice.
Leigh Caldwell said…
Then again, your blogger profile does have four blogs listed. Maybe I'm not going as mad as I thought.
Leigh Caldwell said…
p.s. thanks for stopping by!
Joshua Gans said…
I occasionally posted for the Aplia one and two of the blogs are not active (having been moved elsewhere).

So there is just gametheorist.blogspot.com and economics.com.au. The last one is going to have some changes next week.
Anonymous said…
In terms of the economics Zeitgeist, the Palgrave Econolog tries to pick out some trends, but you can't filter them by the country of origin.

http://www.econolog.net/

Thanks for the mention - that's very kind of you.
Steve Baines said…
Please add: http://cautiousbull.wordpress.com/

Thanks!
Anonymous said…
Thanks! Useful list.
Anonymous said…
Could you add

http://www.economicsfirst.blogspot.co.uk/

please?

Thanks, John

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