The Best of the Best: Who to Follow in 2022

My Gift to You

The views expressed in this blog are entirely my own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the United States Government.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

Instead of my usual Saturday post, I wanted to share some of my favorite follows. These are people who have been invaluable in helping me understand the global economy, public policy, and politics over the last year. Consider this my gift in helping you understand the next year.

Before that, I wanted to thank you all for the support I’ve received over the last six months. At the time of writing, more than 1,000 of you are subscribed, and that number just keeps growing. It feels great to know that people care about and enjoy the things I am writing, and I am incredibly excited to see what the next year has in store for Apricitas. Now, onto the show!

Economics

Taylor Shiroff is a Research Assistant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and writes the blog “Odds and Ends”. He is the only other author I have featured on this blog for good reason—his understanding of the Federal Reserve and monetary policy is nothing short of exceptional.

Skanda Amarnath is the executive director of Employ America and another avid Fed-watcher. His research on topics ranging from full employment to healthcare inflation has been invaluable during the current crisis.

Claudia Sahm is an economist who formerly worked for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the White House Council of Economic Advisors. Currently she works with the Jain Family Institute and writes “Stay at Home Macro” (get it, SAHM?) on substack. Her work on fiscal policy and the stimulus checks in particular is exceptional.

Maia is an Argentine economic consultant and avid blogger/writer. She publishes “Some Unpleasant Arithmetic” on substack where she covers a wide ranging set of economic topics and news from Argentina.

Alan Cole and Timothy Lee are a former economist at the Joint Economic Committee and a former tech reporter, respectively. Together they write “Full Stack Economics”, a newsletter focused on bottom-up, holistic analysis of business and economics.

Matt Klein is a writer, reporter, and analyst who has worked for Barron’s, The Economist, and the Financial Times. Today he writes “The Overshoot”, a newsletter focused on macroeconomics, finance, and economic growth.

Hyun Song Shin is the head of research for the Bank for International Settlements. His real-time research on pandemic economics has been invaluable for understanding the current situation.

Maroon Macro is a pseudonymous hedge fund analyst who writes “Monetary Mechanics”. He gets deep into the plumbing of the global financial system in a way that few writers are able to.

Joseph Wang is a former senior Fed trader. His blog, fedguy.com, and his book “Central Banking 101” are both great tools for understanding the Federal Reserve and its recent actions.

Omair Sharif is an experienced private sector economist and inflation expert. Seriously—I think he knows more about the collection of inflation data than anyone who is not directly employed in collecting that data.

Mike Konczal is the director of Macroeconomic analysis at the Roosevelt Institute. His progressive understanding of the macroeconomy is unparalleled.

Julia Coronado is a former Federal Reserve and private sector economist. She is the founder at “Macro Policy Perspectives” and her, for lack of a better world, perspective has been an important addition to economic discourse.

Diane Swonk is the chief economist at Grant Thornton. She is an expert on the nexus between the labor market and monetary policy, something that is increasingly important given the new Fed framework.

David Beckworth is the host of the Macro Musings Podcast at the Mercatus Center. If you’re at all interested in macroeconomics, there simply is no better podcast.

Fiona Greig is the co-president of the JP Morgan Chase Institute, among other weighty titles. The JP Morgan Chase Institute has been putting out some unbelievably good research during the pandemic, and I am incredibly excited for what’s to come.

Philippa Sigl-Glöckner is the co-founder and director of Dezernat Zukunft (German for “Ministry of the Future”). Her work on German/Eurozone fiscal policy has been incredible, and she is one of the best sources for understanding EU economics.

Business and Finance

Kyla Scanlon is a finance, economics, and business content creator extraordinare. She writes her own substack, shoots her own YouTube videos, and creates her own TikToks. She has an output quantity and quality level that seems almost inhuman—she’s building her own media empire and I am incredibly excited to see what she makes next.

Sam Ro writes the TKer (pronounced “ticker”), an informative, easily digestible blog about the stock market and finance in general. There’s a reason why he’s among a select few authors that substack partnered with directly: his work is perfect for the finance newsletter format.

Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal are Bloomberg writers and cohosts of the podcast “Odd Lots”, which focuses on business, economics, and supply chains. Listen, if you’re interested in business and you aren’t listening to Odd Lots, what are you even doing?

Rory Johnston writes “Commodity Context”, a substack featuring in-depth analysis looking to demystify the commodities industry. As someone who admittedly lacks expert knowledge on commodities, I have found Rory’s work extremely informative.

Labor Markets and Employment

Nick Bunker is an economist at Indeed and self-described “labor flows fanboy”. His research on labor market dynamics has been exceptional, timely, and informative.

Ioana Marinescu is a labor economist and academic. Her work on unemployment insurance has been among my favorite, and she always comes to the discussion with something informative and well-researched.

Anna Stansbury is another labor economist and assistant professor. Her work on labor power, productivity, and wages has been exceptional.

Guy Berger is the principal economist at LinkedIn. The timely analysis of labor economics and employment data that Guy creates has been great.

Arindrajit Dube is an economist and likely the worlds foremost expert on minimum wages. No words I could write would properly communicate the scale of his impact on the economics profession and labor economics in particular.

Matt Darling is an employment policy fellow at the Niskanen Center, but that doesn’t capture anything near the scope of his career or expertise. Matt is an expert on behavioral economics, labor economics, empirical economics, and so much more.

Adam Ozimek is the chief economist at UpWork. He is likely America’s foremost expert on remote work, and you can guess how important that has been over the last two years.

Housing & Urban Planning

Daryl Fairweather is the Chief Economist at Redfin and an all-around housing aficionado . She publishes with Redfin and also creates content for her own YouTube channel.

Ali Wolf is the Chief Economist at Zonda and an expert on housing and labor economics. Her reporting and analysis of the dynamics affecting builders and developers is something I haven’t found anywhere else.

Jenny Schuetz is an urban economist at the Brookings institute, and she is an expert on affordable housing, zoning, and land use policy. I am very excited for her new book, “Fixer Upper”, on fixing America’s housing system.

Natasha Cougoule is a tech worker, housing advocate, and content creator. Her TikTok and Twitter have been informative, funny, and prescient resources on housing politics and policy.

Paul Williams is a fellow at the Jain Family Institute and writes his own blog “The Social Housing Chronicle”. Readers will know that I cite Paul’s work constantly whenever I start talking about housing, and for good reason: his data and policy analysis is exceptional.

Darrell Owens is a Data and Policy Analyst for California YIMBY (yes-in-my-back-yard) and East Bay for Everyone. He writes “The Discourse Lounge”, a blog about housing, transportation, culture, and urban living.

Sebastian Hodges is a pseudonymous land-value-tax-stan and California commentator. He writes “Californianism”, a blog about housing politics in California and the US.

Len Kiefer is the deputy chief economist at Freddie Mac. He is an expert at data analysis and data visualization, and I always enjoy the graphics he brings to the table.

Kevin Erdmann is a senior scholar at the Mercatus center who researches housing and housing finance. His work synthesizes so much on the housing bubble, migration dynamics, housing affordability, and financial regulations in a way that serves to bust so many widely-held myths about the housing market.

Emily Hamilton is another Mercatus scholar and housing researcher. Her research on zoning, and inclusionary zoning in particular, has been great.

Sam Deutsch is a former housing policy fellow at the US Senate and avid housing and transportation advocate. He manages to make housing politics and urbanism Twitter an engaging and interesting place.

Arpit Gupta is a Professor at NYU and writes the blog “Arpitrage”. His blog contains informative, expert level academic analysis of housing economics, transportation economics, and beyond.

Bloggers & Journalists

Michael Derby is a Fed reporter at the Wall Street Journal. He broke the news that Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan was trading stocks improperly during the pandemic, which started a chain of investigative journalism that resulted in the resignations of Kaplan and Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren.

Jerusalem Demsas reports on housing and urban development for Vox Media. I have loved her pieces on gentrification and segregation and the public hysteria surrounding wall street firms buying a small portion of single family homes. She has an expert eye for unseen trends and a unique narrative flow, and I am extremely excited to see what she writes next year.

Angelica Oung is a former reporter for the Taipei Times and expert on renewable energy—nuclear and wind in particular. She is working on launching her own independent organization, “Net Zero Media”, which I am very much looking forward to.

Victoria Guida is an economic policy reporter for Politico. She is an avid fed-watcher and probably among the foremost reporters on the modern political economy.

Brian Cheung is a former Fed employee turned reporter for Yahoo Finance. He manages to combine deep market insight with clever quips and eccentric attitudes in his own special way.

MacroMarkets Daily is a daily chartbook for everything going on in markets and the macroeconomy. I look forward to their posts every morning.

Jeanna Smialek reports on the Federal Reserve and broader economy for the New York Times. She is writing a book on the modern Fed and its transition towards an organization more aligned with worker interests and more focused on full employment.

Ben Casselman is a journalist for the New York Times covering business and economics. His work is always data-driven, punchy, and informative.

Thanks Again

I have a lot planned for Apricitas in the new year, and I am excited to be able to share it with you. For now though, I just want to say thanks again for reading, sharing, and commenting on this blog over the last six months.