I’m taking part in a panel discussion on “Disseminating Economic Research in the Policy Debate” at the European Economic Association and Econometric Society Congress next month. Starting to think about what I’ll need to think about to prepare, I picked up [amazon_link id=”0262025620″ target=”_blank” ]Lives of the Laureates: Eighteen Nobel economists[/amazon_link] edited by William Breit and Barry Hirsch. I have the 4th (2005) edition of this interesting series.

[amazon_image id=”0262025620″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Lives of the Laureates: Eighteen Nobel Economists[/amazon_image]

The series has got up to 23 Nobel economists now.

[amazon_image id=”0262012766″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Lives of the Laureates: Twenty-Three Nobel Economists[/amazon_image]

Some common themes stand out – the drive to contribute to making it a better world, the sense of being dismissed or disregarded by peers, but also in many cases either the ambition or the actuality of contributing to public debate in an accessible way.

For example, Gary Becker here describes getting a call from Business Week asking him to contribute a regular column, and not turning down the invitation, on the advice of his wife. He says: “It was hard for me to learn how to write a popular column. Writing short requires far more effort than writing long….. I do not know why they asked me, to tell the truth, but the experience has been great for me. It has taught me how to express economic ideas in a simple and non-technical way. I will make the assertion that every single important economic idea can be stated simply. … And when people state that an ideas is too complicated to state simply, it usually means they do not know how to state it simply, sometimes because they do not fully understand it.”

I wholeheartedly agree. Blogging and social media have given all academic economists the opportunity to write for the public, and I applaud the ones who can combine their scholarly work with the important work of communicating important ideas simply. Becker has taken to the online world, with the excellent Becker-Posner blog, always worth a read.