Harvard Review

A prominent sports economist blogger is not easy to come by, in fact upon looking without any success, the conclusion was made that there are practically no sports economist bloggers. Instead, the next best thing to look for was a prominent voice in the economics sphere, who is quite admirable, and consistently incorporates the blogging approach. On the surface, Greg Mankiw is this. Mankiw graduated from MIT and went on to be a distinguished professor at Harvard University teaching introduction to micro and macro economics, however, Mankiw is so much more than just this. He is a modern day genius-translator of economics for a generation who implores a different style of learning, much different from the way Mankiw himself learned and how it’s been taught for decades. Mankiw understands this, and instead of sticking with what he knew, he evolved himself into a blogger of economics and publishes his works through blogspot, under his blog name “Greg Mankiw’s Blog Random Observation for Students of Economics”. He blogs multiple times each week and has been doing so for the past 10 years, and still does to this day, in fact he most recently wrote about his thoughts on president elect Donald Trump. Mankiw doesn’t focus on aesthetics, in fact his blogspot profile is as basic as it gets, but his content is anything but basic. For whatever reason, I believe his overall viewership is far to low. In fact through similarweb it was noted that he ranks as the 1, 504th blog within the social sciences realm in terms of viewership. Furthermore, as is seen on blogspot, his total views are around 515 thousand. Besides his popularity, Mankiw himself genuinely cares about the field of economics and doesn’t want it to be dumbed down. At the same time, he wants students of economics to prosper, even if that means stepping out of his comfort zone and blogging. By adapting to a blog type of atmosphere, Mankiw is constantly reaching students and sharing what he considers the vital aspects of being a student of economics. Besides writing blogs, he has also written numerous textbooks, which multiple universities use, including but not limited to the University of Southern California. His most notable publication is entitled “Principle of Economics” which is distributed through Cengage Learning, and has already sold over two million copies. Through his vast knowledge on the subject, along with his accomplishments since, he commands the attention of the reader.

For young students trying to thrust themselves into the world of economics, it would be hard to find someone more accommodating and helpful then Mankiw. Besides caring for the student body at Harvard, it’s clear to see that he cares about all students of economics and wants to contribute the advancement of the field itself. When Mankiw posts, you listen it’s as simple as that. One of the first posts from his blog from 2006, which is when he first started the blog, entitled “Advice for Aspiring Economists” proves this true care and respect for the field of economics and those who wish to pursue it. In this post, Mankiw starts off be revealing a recently received an email from a student asking, “Do you have some hints for me, how to become a good economist?” Mankiw, noting that this question’s answer could apply to all persons of the economy, reveals his answer in the rest of his post. He gives six legitimate things to do to be a good economist, as well as gives a link to a scholarly work he created through the harvard network that goes much more in depth and is in more formal style. He is a savior to people like me who are almost at the point of graduating but couldn’t tell you much about their own major.. Help? For those economists who don’t know about him, well that’s a shame because he could be a big help to just about anyone and his blogs are proofs. One of his other posts that proves his compassion is when he wrote “New’s Flash Economist Agree” in 2009. In this post, Mankiw is laying out the blueprint for any schmuck off the streets (like me) to become a knowledgeable economist. He gives 14 facts that are the most agreed upon in economics. To me, this proves Mankiw’s compassion and worth to students because he is not one of those guys that has the knowledge but keeps it for himself because he doesn’t view others as worthy, instead Mankiw share’s his work. The funny thing is, if one person should feel like no one else is as worthy of him, it’s Mankiw. But he still shares his great knowledge and that is great news for upcoming economists, especially the ones who are a bit lost like me. So who am I? Let me introduce myself.