!VAR HAGENDOORN

If On a Summer’s Night a Blogger

In a recent blogpost Harvard economist Dani Rodrik recommends another blog, adding that he hopes the author isn’t doing this in lieu of working on his journal articles. Überblogger Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid fame once commented that “a lot of serious bloggers became so because frankly, they had a lot of time on their hands. And often there were good reasons for that.”

That kind of sums up the reason behind the relative shortage of blogposts in recent weeks. I know that it is good blogging practice to have some posts in stock to fall back upon when you don’t have time to post new content. But I’ve never had time to build up a stock.

I’m currently working on another paper and just finished writing a lengthy review of some books I’ve recently read. I hope it will be accepted for publication. I’m working on a host of other things, all of which will be unveiled here in due time. Incidentally, one of the books I reviewed is One Economics Many Recipes by Dani Rodrik, one of the most interesting economists working on globalization and economic growth.

I always wonder where someone like Willem Buiter finds the time to write so many long and well-considered blogposts, since he’s a professor at the London School of Economics. In addition he’s also a part-time adviser to Goldman Sachs. But I assume he receives a nice compensation package from the Financial Times for maintaining his blog. Would be interesting to know whether he is paid per word, per blogpost or just per month.

The title of this post is a reference to If on a winter's night a traveller, by Italo Calvino, one of my favorite novels.