Someday

Someday, someone is going to look back on this blog and say "what did the John Bates Clark award winning economist Frederick Ghansah have to say about the shocking events in the economy in fall of 2008?" And then they will look back on this blog, and think to themselves, "not much". 

One of the things I should probably do is explain what it is that an economist actually does, or more specifically, what I intend to do as an economist. This is a question that I get asked very frequently, and I am seldom able to give an answer that is satisfactory to either myself or my audience. People assume I know about what everyone thinks of as "the economy": stocks, Wall Street, investment, dividends, all that. But of course, I profess a layman's knowledge at best of the above topics, which leads people to ask "then what do you do?" At which point I construct a sort of ad hoc explanation, which generally references the topics of the last few papers I've read or something. 

What is a more satisfactory answer? I'm not entirely sure yet. I'll have to get back to you on that.