How Do Economists Decide What to Write About?

In the wide world of data streams and moments to daydream, economists find a far-reaching range of topics to analyze and write about for the St. Louis Fed’s publications, particularly our blogs.

The question of what to study for a potential blog post begins in a variety of ways, several economists in our Research division said.

Offshoots of Other Projects

Victoria Gregory

“A lot of it comes from spinoffs of projects that I’m already working on,” Economist Victoria Gregory said. “Sometimes I notice something in the data that wasn’t part of my original focus but stands out and is easy to explain.”

For example, Gregory had downloaded data from the American Community Survey on college attainment and income, and she noticed that the dataset also contained numbers on housing. It occurred to her to check on homeownership patterns, and she discovered data that showed younger generations of Americans were buying houses at lower rates than older generations had. So she wrote an Economic Synopses essay and then recorded a Timely Topics podcast episode on the topic.

What’s in the News

YiLi Chien

For Economic Policy Advisor YiLi Chien, aspects of his own research and what’s in the news spark ideas. Chien frequently studies the Japanese economy, so his interest was piqued when he heard sovereign wealth funds suddenly become a topic in U.S. news reports; Japan already has such a fund.

“It would be interesting to see how U.S. policy is going to shift, so I might write about what a sovereign wealth fund would mean for the U.S.,” he said.

Multiple Posts on a Specific Topic

Juan M. Sánchez

Similarly, Senior Economic Policy Advisor Juan Sánchez parlays his research interest in personal debt into multiple blog posts.

“During COVID, I looked at ZIP codes where the COVID cases were increasing and was it related to financial distress because I already had that dataset. I found that yes, it was connected,” Sanchez said.

He wrote multiple On the Economy blog posts, led off by “COVID-19 and Financial Distress: Employment Vulnerability.”

A Place to Explore Data

Fernando Leibovici

Sánchez and Economic Policy Advisor Fernando Leibovici find that the shorter research articles they write for the St. Louis Fed’s blogs can also lead to longer, more academic research papers they can submit to journals for publication.

“Sometimes I have a paper, and the blog is an opportunity to boil it down to its simplest parts. But there are other times I use the blog as an opportunity to explore data that may become a paper. It’s an exploratory place to get some facts out and see the reaction,” Leibovici explained.

Some topics arise from discussions Leibovici has with St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem, he said. Other times, questions from reporters will spark a question that leads to a post.

Ideas from an Email Exchange

Guillaume Vandenbroucke

For Senior Economic Policy Advisor Guillaume Vandenbroucke, the first step on the path to a blog post often begins with an email exchange with another colleague—a practice that started for him in graduate school. At that time, he was working on his Ph.D. dissertation, and he would send a note to his advisor about data he found. His advisor would give him feedback on the value of the data.

“Now it’s a note between me and my co-author. The blog post serves as an intermediate step to help me clarify my thoughts,” Vandenbroucke said.

But when it comes to crafting a FRED Blog post, he and other economists will casually surf among the hundreds of thousands of data series in FRED looking for a nugget to build a post on.

“Because FRED has such old data, it’s really interesting to look at,” Vandenbroucke said, referring to his post “Population growth and economic growth: A long-term look at U.K. data.” The data go back to middle of the 13th century.

Cues from Social and Traditional Media

Christian Zimmermann

As the curation editor of the FRED Blog posts, Christian Zimmermann takes his topic cues from social media and traditional media. Zimmermann is assistant vice president of Research Information Services.

“I have written hundreds of blog posts, and the inspiration I find is because I want to help people understand something,” he said. “We’ve done a number of blog posts highlighting the difference between nominal and real [numbers], which can lead to a lot of mistakes.”

Zimmermann also likes to mine new data that become available on FRED.

“I sometimes spend time on FRED just to see what’s there,” he added.

Why Do Economists Write for Our Blogs?

Writing for our blogs is one way economists at the St. Louis Fed help inform monetary policy and everyday economic decisions, as noted in the St. Louis Fed’s 2024 annual report. Their blog posts help people and organizations better understand the economy.

Want to read the latest posts from economists? Check out the On the Economy blog and the FRED Blog.