Make Use of the Internet!

You've just started your economics degree (or at least a degree vaguely related to economics), which means you must be at least a little keen to understand more about the economy around us - if not least to impress your friends.

An attitude that seems to pervade many economics students at Birmingham though is "how much do I have to do?", or perhaps better paraphrased "how little can I get away with doing?". Can I get away with just buying this particular textbook and then reading the specific bits the lecturer refers to? Can I then spend all of the rest of my time doing other more interesting stuff (Wii, drinking, whatever)?

The answer, of course, is "yes, of course you can - provided you're happy with a 2:2". In the increasingly difficult workplace out there post-degree, a 2:2 might not cut the mustard.

The point is this: Make the most of your time as a student, and make the most of the resources available to you - academically! It sounds cringeworthy, but most previous students of economics would have given their right arm for the kinds of resources freely available to you via the internet. Prominent economists whom previous to hear their thoughts you needed to be a student at their university (not always easy when they're at Harvard and such places), but now you can just read their blogs.

You can read the most prominent thinkers in the field daily and start to understand how they think, how economists think, and most of all you can get their take on why the economy is where it is right now.

Use these resources available to you - you don't need to be an expert to read them because these guys are trying to write in a more easily accessible language than you'd find in one of their papers. To this end and to encourage you to do this, an extra panel has been added on the right hand side of this blog as you read it, with the title ECON101AB BLOGS. Go visit them, browse, see what you learn!

Economics of Everything

If you're a new student here at Birmingham, keen to learn your economics, can I point you in the direction of Marginal Revolution? It's a blog written by two economists, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok and contains many posts each day, often relating every day or topical events into the thinking of economists.

For example today they comment on the contract the Chilean miners have apparently signed in order that none of them attempts to individually profit from the group's experiences underground for over two months. Will it hold up? How will they enforce it if one of the group deviates?

All these kinds of things are intriguing economic issues relating to such actions of individuals and groups. Marginal Revolution's Markets in Everything series of posts are highly illuminatings and I'd highly recommend them as you begin your economics degree and start attempting to think like economists...