The author has been described by News Ltd as an "iconoclast", "Svengali", a pollie's "economist muse", and "pungently accurate". Fairfax says he is a "Renaissance man" and "one of Australia’s most respected analysts." Stephen Koukoulas concludes that he is "85% right", and "would make a great Opposition leader." Terry McCrann claims the author thinks "‘nuance’ is a trendy village in the south of France", but can be "scintillating" when he thinks "clearly". The ACTU reckons he’s "an enigma wrapped in a Bloomberg terminal, wrapped in some apparently well-honed abs."

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Joshua Gans on why cooking half-baked ideas makes good cuisine

Joshua's post about the tension between academics that don't blog, and those that do, makes for a very interesting read. What Joshua oddly fails to disclose is that he has personally founded a research centre at Melbourne Business School, called the Centre for Ideas and the Economy, on precisely this premise. And at least one of CITE's ideas generated a $16 billion government policy. The thinking behind CITE, which is certainly novel in a domestic context (and may be internationally as well), is that we want to accelerate idea generation, iteration, and ultimate implementation by short-circuiting the traditional academic publication process, which can take many years.
at 8:56 PM