Blogging

I post occasionally on the department blog Leisure of the Theory Class, which is shared with Eran Shmaya, Eilon Solan and Rakesh Vohra. This is a good outlet for research ideas I just haven't had time to pursue in more depth, as well as random game-theoretic thoughts about the world. A couple of posts had some surprising success:

In April 2010, I took public a point about basketball strategy I had been quietly fuming about for over a decade: Coaches are much, much too conservative about taking out players when they accumulate too many fouls. The post was linked by major sports media sites and accumulated over 10,000 views, perhaps a few more than my academic work.

In December 2010, I happened to read an address by Greg Mankiw, applying some classic economic efficiency theorems to advocate a conservative tax plan. I thought it was very questionable whether the key assumptions behind those theorems could hold in practice, and put my concerns in a lengthy entry on the blog. Hours later, Prof. Mankiw, an extraordinarily gracious opponent, had linked to us from his widely read blog, and he suggested that my comments be printed as an official reply. This entry received about 6,000 hits; tax policy is interesting, but not quite as much as basketball.

I hope that you explore and enjoy other posts in the archive as well!