Economics is one of the most interesting fields of study since it explains how societies, governments, businesses, and people make decisions facing scarce resources. How many times do you find yourself thinking about opportunity cost? The cost of watching one more hour of your favorite TV show instead of studying for that really important midterm on the next day. In addition, being aware of economic events happening in one’s country and around the world helps he or she to build informed opinions, enhance employment opportunities, learn about other cultures, and much more. Therefore, it is easy to understand why so many people are interested in deeply studying this field and why the Department of Economics in the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) is so competitive.
Getting a degree in Economics requires a lot of hard work, reading, and writing. Since in the first courses students take as undergraduates, professors encourage them to read important articles as a way to make them learn how to write as economists. Since I am an undergraduate student in economics and passionate about macroeconomics, the goal of my research was to better understand what are the writing features and genres that define not only the whole Economics field, but this specific branch.
After analyzing articles published by both the American Economic Association (AEA) and The Economist: Intelligence Unit websites, attending one class of Introduction to Macroeconomics (ECON 2) at UCSB, and watching a podcast on the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) website, I realized that what most people believe about how economists write is not true. Since economics is such a complex field of study, many people conclude that writing an academic article or research paper requires the use of difficult and abstract words. For economics’ articles, however, this statement is not true. Actually, they do not make use of specific words nor do they write in a complex manner; they, instead, communicate in a direct, informal tone.
The American Economic Association (AEA) is an association through which economists can publish papers about recent economic events, as well as learn from, and collaborate with, their colleagues. Everyone can be a member of this association and have access to all articles published there. Accessing this website is a good way to be involved in recent events since it offers journals in which we can find articles about a variety of economic topics, such as American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Literature, Economic Policy, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics.
The first academic paper analyzed is one published by the American Economic Journal (AEA), as an attempt to find common writing practices. Monetary Policy Surprises, Credit Costs, and Economic Activity, written by Mark Gertler and Peter Karadi, was one of the many articles published in the American Economic Journal (AEJ) Best Paper Awards section and is an informational report whose purpose is to give factual information about the monetary policy transmission mechanism. To achieve this goal, the authors make use of mathematical formulas, graphs, and charts, and write using an informal language. At the beginning of their paper, they summarize and explain in a short paragraph why the study is being done using a direct tone. Throughout the article, they keep writing in a direct, simple manner. Although they write in a simple way, the paper is dense (about 70 pages long) and sometimes difficult to follow. The use of acronyms without previous explanation, such as “GSS” and “FF4” (page 56, 3p.), is also observed. In addition, the writers mention many renamed works while they are building their paper since they want to increase credibility with readers. Therefore, the audience of this genre is people truly interested in the field and with at least an undergraduate degree.
The second piece was published on The Economist: Intelligence Unit website. This website is a great tool to find analysis, forecasts, and economic summaries of all countries in the world. “Brazil in 2018: economic recovery amid election jitters” is a forecast in which the author aims to describe the economy in Brazil, explain how it changed in the past year, and predict the economic environment for this new year. Since an Economic Forecast aims to predict the economic future of a society, it makes use of important and widely-followed indicators such as inflation, growth rate, interest rates, and politics. The writer divides this piece into sections in order to analyze each indicator separately and make it easier for readers to navigate through it. Economic Forecasts are not supposed to be dense or hard to follow. For this reason, the writer chooses a simple way to pass his economic knowledge and predictions. The readers of this piece do not need any previous knowledge in economics nor do they need to be familiar with the economy and politics in Brazil. The writer summarizes all important information before starting his predictions so people who do not know much about a specific country can still understand his predictions. Therefore, the writer is trying to reach not only economists who study the economy of countries in Latin America and Americans that are interested in the country, but also Brazilians who wish to know how other countries report and predict their economic and political events.
Analyzing these articles was crucial in understanding how economists communicate with each other using academic pieces. However, another way for them to pass their knowledge is through lectures. Professor Peter Rupert teaches UCSB undergraduate students and, by watching one of his classes, it was easy to understand his purpose and why he structures the class the way he does. Rupert, speaking in an informal tone, introduces common writing practices, such as the use of graphs, charts, and mathematical symbols, used in the field. His PowerPoint is direct, highlighting just important terms and acronyms, and showing many graphs and charts. In addition, he gives more practical than theoretical examples of the topics as he wants to get students’ attention, always referring to videos and recommending articles about the topic he is teaching. Professor Rupert’s main goal is to encourage research and generate interest. He structures his lectures thinking about what students will face when having to write and read in the future as economists.
The last method used as an attempt to better understand how to write as an economist is to analyze a podcast on the LSE website. Dr. Alpa Shah, speaker of “Is capitalism eliminating social inequalities?”, is a political and macroeconomic anthropologist who wrote and edited several books regarding the economy in India and Nepal, ethnicity, inequality and poverty, and much more. This video was made and edited following the features of the writing in this field. She was very direct, as well as informal, when explaining this topic. The video editor used, instead of graphs and charts, real filming images in order to increase viewers interest and attention. In addition, another feature that macroeconomists use when writing, and that can be observed in the podcast, is creating models. Models analyze a specific problem/situation in order to explain a much more complex and broad scenario. Dr. Shah talks about inequality in India (specific example) to prove that capitalism actually did not eliminate inequality in the whole world (broader picture). Therefore, it does not matter if we are analyzing articles, a specific class, or a podcast, we can observe macroeconomic literacy practices in all of them.
Finally, it is evident that economics is an extensive field with many literary features and genres. However, its writing practices are not complex and economists actually write in an informal, direct manner. It does not matter which genre a macroeconomist is writing, they always use techniques to make their paper easy to follow and comprehend. They make use of graphs and charts, as well as create models in order to facilitate the approach of such broad topic, and they are as objective as possible. Therefore, economists communicate with each other and with outsiders using the same tone and normally the audience of their pieces are not only people with a degree in economics but everyone who is interested in recent worldwide events.