You were recently quoted in a Wall Street Journal article on the increasing length of economic papers. Were there any quotes that you wish had made it into the article that got cut?
Yes! I made the point that part of the reason that articles are so long is that their length necessitates even more length! It sounds paradoxical, but it’s true. If you’re going to write 50 pages of body text, you need a 10 page intro to summarize it all — since almost no one will read your 50 page paper. But then, if the body of the paper is so long, you’d better add in signposts, summaries, and previews along the way. The end result is that the extra length of your paper demands even more text.
By analogy: If you engineer an overweight automobile, you’ll need a bigger engine, and a heftier suspension, and larger brakes, and a larger fuel tank for that larger engine, etc. All of these additions compound the original error. If you’d simply start out with a lean vehicle design, you need to add fewer weighty components to compensate for its excess mass.
Are there any resources you’d recommend for aspiring economists—particularly but not only undergraduates—who want to write well? Or are there any economists who you think are especially good writers?
Paul Krugman’s Development, Geography, and Economic Theory is one of my favorite parables. It illuminates the role that economic theory serves in our profession.
Joshua Angrist is a terrific expository writer, and an admire both of his econometrics textbooks and his other popular and technical writings.
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