Berkeleyan
Berkeley economists, Nobelist launch journal journal
| 30 September 2004
The first issue of The Economists’ Voice, a new journal of analysis and opinion about key economic-policy issues, was launched last week by two Berkeley economists and a Nobel laureate from Columbia University.
In its premiere edition, the journal tackles such topics as the fair use of intellectual property, political party flip-flops on federal deficits, the mysteries of international capital flow, and evaluation of former President Clinton’s claim that he put police on the streets and took guns off while President Bush has done the opposite.
Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001 and has served both as chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and as chief economist at the World Bank, is editing the journal. Co-editors are Aaron Edlin, a Berkeley professor of economics and law, and J. Bradford Delong, a Berkeley professor of economics. Both Edlin and DeLong held senior positions in the Clinton administration.
The idea of the journal, Edlin said, is to offer articles with deeper analysis than can be found on the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal or New York Times, but on topics of comparable general interest. The target audience, he said, includes professional economists, policy analysts and policymakers, lawyers, and students.
Regular columnists will include George Akerlof, Berkeley’s Koshland Professor of Economics (himself a 2001 Nobel laureate), as well as Stiglitz and Douglas North, an economist at Washington University in St. Louis and 1995 winner of the Nobel Prize.
Columnists also include Princeton University economist Paul Krugman, three former chairs of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from both major political parties, economist Michael Boskin from the Hoover Institution, a federal appellate judge, Yale University Professor of Law and Business Ian Ayres, and co-editors Edlin and DeLong.
“The involvement of so many prominent economists lends credence to my belief that our publication fills a glaring need,” said Stiglitz. “Anyone with an interest in public policy — or even those just curious about the debates among economists — will find The Economists’ Voice an innovative and useful source for information.”
The journal will be published online at www.bepress.com/ev at least six times a year by Berkeley Electronic Press.