New York Times Alters Their Economics Columns

(note: About.com is owned by the New York Times Co.) David Leonhardt discusses changes being made to the NYT's Economic View column:

The View column will now be written by a rotating panel of outside economists. Besides Mr. Mankiw, it will include Alan Blinder, Judith Chevalier, Robert Shiller and Lester Thurow, as well as three of the economists who have been writing the Economic Scene column on Thursdays: Austan Goolsbee, Tyler Cowen and Robert Frank. (The fourth member of the Scene rotation, Hal R. Varian, is leaving to concentrate on his new role as Google’s chief economist.)

This prompts Greg Mankiw to ask: What economist would you to have seen added to this list?

My response - the list of economists above leans very heavily to the macro side of economics, particularly now the Varian has left. A greater representation of the subfields of economics would be enjoyable. So here is my list:

I'd love to see more focus on international economics and trade. Jagdish Bhagwati would be excellent for this role.

The next area I'd like to see more of is labor economics. Caroline Hoxby would add another female to the panel and bring a lot of experience on the economics of education. While I'm not a fan of the methods used in their famous minimum wage paper, David Card or Alan B. Krueger would also be fine choices.

A behavioralist would be an excellent addition as well. I'd be interested in reading articles by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman.

A number of people have suggested David Friedman and Steven Landsburg. I enjoy the work of both men and I got to know Landsburg from my time at Rochester and consider him to be a friend. That being said, I don't know how useful they'd be here - they're very good at the economics explains all sorts of weird phenomena type articles. But that kind of economics has been done to death over the last ten years.

Those are my picks. I'd love to hear yours!