Alex Tabarrok
Where to hear and read about Alex Tabarrok1 episode or test
Alex Tabarrok is an economist at George Mason University who has co-written the Marginal Revolution blog with Tyler Cowen every day since 2003, and co-authored a textbook and a free video course with him. The thing most worth learning from him is how to simplify before you explain, and to keep a daily habit going for decades by working fast and keeping egos out of it.
A price is a signal wrapped up in an incentive.
How to Teach Millions of People with Your Blog — Tyler Cowen & Alex Tabarrok
Alex Tabarrok: the story and the lessons
1How Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen built Marginal Revolution
Tabarrok proposed a textbook, and the blog began as practice for it. Tabarrok proposed a textbook and Cowen told him to write a blog first. The first post ran in August 2003, before Twitter and before the iPhone.
The early posts were practice, and they did not know anyone was reading. Tabarrok jokes that he asked, "What's a blog?" Cowen remembers it differently, a Rashomon moment.
The first 10,000 visitors arrived within weeks, with no advertising. Tabarrok's October 2003 note read: "Yesterday we breached 10,000 visitors for the first time. Keep coming. You're in good company."
They had hoped for about 5,000 readers, mostly academics. The blog now has 50,000 to 100,000 readers.
Tabarrok insisted on the word "much" in the tagline. The tagline is small steps toward a much better world. Cowen first thought "much" was crazy, and looking back he says Tabarrok was right.
Twenty years of small posts led to bigger things such as Fast Grants and the COVID response. Small steps came first and "much" second.
The blog, the textbook and the free videos work as one product line. Years of explaining ideas on the blog improved the textbook, and the textbook sends readers back to the blog. Marginal Revolution University is free on YouTube with no ads, and it aims to be in 25% of American high schools by 2025.
The videos began as the two of them with a narrated PowerPoint made with a $5 iPad app. Funding later paid for filming, animation and sound.
Tabarrok's courses found a global audience he never planned for. Google adds subtitles in about 100 languages once a video is on the web, so students abroad learn English and economics together. India is already the number two market and will likely become number one.
Tabarrok says the subtitles "broadened our scope tremendously" without any work from them. Emails arrive from students in South Korea, India and Pakistan saying they passed their class.
2How Tabarrok writes: stark first, short, memorable
Tabarrok starts with the stark version and adds detail back. He cuts a topic to its most stark situation, then adds bells and whistles. Cowen goes the other way, from the most complicated version down, and they meet in the middle.
His test for which of them wrote a post: if you are confused, it is Cowen's. If you understand it and are furious, it is Tabarrok's.
He says he writes clearly because he must simplify to understand. Tabarrok says he writes well because he isn't as smart as Cowen, though Cowen disagrees with that framing. If a point isn't obvious to him, it won't be obvious to a first-time student.
That beginner's confusion is what makes him a strong textbook writer.
He spends extra minutes making each post shorter. Tabarrok reasons that if 50,000 to 100,000 readers each save a second or two, tightening a post is a social good worth a few minutes.
They call the posts "dim sum for the mind", short bites a reader finishes and moves on from. They have kept the format for 20 years.
He coins one memorable line that compresses the idea. Tabarrok says he is good at pithy sayings. He wrote the textbook line "A price is a signal wrapped up in an incentive" and the subtitle "See the invisible hand, understand your world".
His 2004 advice was to be brief, interesting and timely, and he still stands behind it, though he would not call it a web log now.
His low-context posts hit hard and balance Cowen's soft style. Cowen writes in a high-context way that leaves room for the reader. Tabarrok's posts hit like "a punch in the gut", and some readers get angry.
Each audience gains from hearing the other writer, so the blog has to be a joint enterprise. Cowen likens it to Seinfeld, where under the insults you sense how much they enjoy meeting.
Tabarrok shapes single posts like episodes that build to a punchline. He sees the structure of Drive to Survive in the daily blog: each episode repeats one form, with drivers rising and falling. He builds a post toward a climax and ends on a punchy line.
He praises Succession for plotting that comes entirely from character, with a final two minutes that recasts everything before.
3How Tabarrok works with a partner
Tabarrok does the shared draft first so his partner can work too. Once he sends the co-authored piece back, the other person works while he does his own tasks. He says it gets you twice as much done.
Cowen does the same, so each returns drafts fast. They learned each other's work habits right away when they began writing papers together.
He does a task now or says no, never "in three weeks". Tabarrok answers referee reports right away because he will not be less busy later. His rule is to either do it now or say no, since in four weeks there will be something else.
Cowen adds that on average you will be busier later, not less busy.
He keeps ego out of the work so the pair can argue freely. They argue all the time and both focus on what the right answer is. Tabarrok would never tell Cowen a post was a mistake, though he says that to other colleagues.
That detachment from the outcome is part of why a true partnership has lasted twenty years. Tabarrok calls real collaboration oddly scarce.
Tabarrok edits Cowen's writing even when he is not in the room. Cowen imagines Tabarrok reading as he writes, which pushes him toward simpler, clearer prose. The textbook stays in one voice because the two write everything themselves, with no research assistants or junior authors.
Cowen jokes that his own problem is that he enjoys confusing students more.
Tabarrok learned what Cowen's reading was for as his research assistant. Cowen once sent him to fetch ten library books and return them the next day, and he thought it was a power game. Later Cowen read Tabarrok's paper on the spot and cited Arrow 1958.
That is when Tabarrok saw why the books mattered. He says the scarce thing in blogging is having original things to say at a high pace.
Tabarrok can take breaks because Cowen keeps the blog running. Tabarrok feels no pressure to post every day because Cowen does. Since 2003 they have not missed a day in almost 20 years, with four to five posts on essentially every day.
He thinks a new blog needs two or three people to supply something new daily.
4How Tabarrok gets ideas and drops drafts
Tabarrok gets ideas in the shower, Cowen from conversation. Around 2000 Tabarrok imagined scanning a barcode with a phone. He found three patents on it already, which pushed him to write about the patent system.
He tells students to talk ideas through with good partners and notice when an interesting one appears.
He learned from Cowen to kill a draft and rewrite it. A chapter Cowen had shared with him came back weeks later completely different. Tabarrok calls the habit "a LeBron kind of thing": write it again until it is right.
Cowen has about 2,500 unpublished book pages, mostly not good but not truly terrible.
His one disappointment is that readers never go back to the archive. Readers treat the blog like a newspaper, so good posts fade and nobody returns to them.
Tabarrok says there is a lot to learn from going back through the archive.
Tabarrok calls professor the greatest job ever and wants to spread good economic thinking. He says most of the world has not caught up to Adam Smith. The blog shows students what a life of ideas looks like.
Students arrive at George Mason saying they have read the blog since age 12, and some are now getting PhDs.
5What Tabarrok argues about patents, ideas and the internet
Tabarrok argues patent law ignores the cost of innovation versus imitation. A first pill costs a billion dollars and the second costs about 50 cents. Economists defend patents as a monopoly that lets the first inventor recoup that cost, yet actual patent law never discusses it.
He asked why a bare idea can be patented at all when theory says patents should reward high innovation costs.
He proposes patent terms of 3, 10 and 20 years tied to R&D spending. A three-year patent is granted quickly. A 10 or 20-year patent requires showing real R&D spending.
The tiers tie the length of monopoly to the cost it is meant to repay. The idea grew into a paper he wrote.
His TED talk argues ideas, not goods, drive growth. The talk's line is "One apple feeds one man, but an idea can feed the world." It builds on Paul Romer's work on the importance of ideas for growth.
He is excited by the new scientists and engineers in India and China, which raises the world's stock of R&D workers. Moving people off subsistence farms into idea work creates massive externalities that benefit others.
He sees the internet opening the center of the idea world to anyone. A rural reader with a phone can sit in the capital of America in terms of ideas. Old institutions still use the internet superficially, with PDFs and a comms-team Twitter feed.
Tabarrok and Cowen say the power of the written word has never been higher and the openness of discourse has never been greater.
How to Teach Millions of People with Your Blog — Tyler Cowen & Alex Tabarrok
Two economists who have blogged together every day for over 20 years explain how they write short, clear pieces for busy readers, and how their different instincts (one starts complex, one starts simple) make both better. The habits worth hearing are a daily publishing rule, killing drafts freely, and getting ideas from conversation rather than solitary thinking.
Tabarrok proposed a textbook, and the blog began as practice for it. Tabarrok proposed a textbook and Cowen told him to write a blog first. The first post ran in August 2003, before Twitter and before the iPhone.
The early posts were practice, and they did not know anyone was reading. Tabarrok jokes that he asked, "What's a blog?" Cowen remembers it differently, a Rashomon moment.
The first 10,000 visitors arrived within weeks, with no advertising. Tabarrok's October 2003 note read: "Yesterday we breached 10,000 visitors for the first time. Keep coming. You're in good company."
They had hoped for about 5,000 readers, mostly academics. The blog now has 50,000 to 100,000 readers.
Tabarrok insisted on the word "much" in the tagline. The tagline is small steps toward a much better world. Cowen first thought "much" was crazy, and looking back he says Tabarrok was right.
Twenty years of small posts led to bigger things such as Fast Grants and the COVID response. Small steps came first and "much" second.
The blog, the textbook and the free videos work as one product line. Years of explaining ideas on the blog improved the textbook, and the textbook sends readers back to the blog. Marginal Revolution University is free on YouTube with no ads, and it aims to be in 25% of American high schools by 2025.
The videos began as the two of them with a narrated PowerPoint made with a $5 iPad app. Funding later paid for filming, animation and sound.
Tabarrok's courses found a global audience he never planned for. Google adds subtitles in about 100 languages once a video is on the web, so students abroad learn English and economics together. India is already the number two market and will likely become number one.
Tabarrok says the subtitles "broadened our scope tremendously" without any work from them. Emails arrive from students in South Korea, India and Pakistan saying they passed their class.
Tabarrok starts with the stark version and adds detail back. He cuts a topic to its most stark situation, then adds bells and whistles. Cowen goes the other way, from the most complicated version down, and they meet in the middle.
His test for which of them wrote a post: if you are confused, it is Cowen's. If you understand it and are furious, it is Tabarrok's.
He says he writes clearly because he must simplify to understand. Tabarrok says he writes well because he isn't as smart as Cowen, though Cowen disagrees with that framing. If a point isn't obvious to him, it won't be obvious to a first-time student.
That beginner's confusion is what makes him a strong textbook writer.
He spends extra minutes making each post shorter. Tabarrok reasons that if 50,000 to 100,000 readers each save a second or two, tightening a post is a social good worth a few minutes.
They call the posts "dim sum for the mind", short bites a reader finishes and moves on from. They have kept the format for 20 years.
He coins one memorable line that compresses the idea. Tabarrok says he is good at pithy sayings. He wrote the textbook line "A price is a signal wrapped up in an incentive" and the subtitle "See the invisible hand, understand your world".
His 2004 advice was to be brief, interesting and timely, and he still stands behind it, though he would not call it a web log now.
His low-context posts hit hard and balance Cowen's soft style. Cowen writes in a high-context way that leaves room for the reader. Tabarrok's posts hit like "a punch in the gut", and some readers get angry.
Each audience gains from hearing the other writer, so the blog has to be a joint enterprise. Cowen likens it to Seinfeld, where under the insults you sense how much they enjoy meeting.
Tabarrok shapes single posts like episodes that build to a punchline. He sees the structure of Drive to Survive in the daily blog: each episode repeats one form, with drivers rising and falling. He builds a post toward a climax and ends on a punchy line.
He praises Succession for plotting that comes entirely from character, with a final two minutes that recasts everything before.
Tabarrok does the shared draft first so his partner can work too. Once he sends the co-authored piece back, the other person works while he does his own tasks. He says it gets you twice as much done.
Cowen does the same, so each returns drafts fast. They learned each other's work habits right away when they began writing papers together.
He does a task now or says no, never "in three weeks". Tabarrok answers referee reports right away because he will not be less busy later. His rule is to either do it now or say no, since in four weeks there will be something else.
Cowen adds that on average you will be busier later, not less busy.
He keeps ego out of the work so the pair can argue freely. They argue all the time and both focus on what the right answer is. Tabarrok would never tell Cowen a post was a mistake, though he says that to other colleagues.
That detachment from the outcome is part of why a true partnership has lasted twenty years. Tabarrok calls real collaboration oddly scarce.
Tabarrok edits Cowen's writing even when he is not in the room. Cowen imagines Tabarrok reading as he writes, which pushes him toward simpler, clearer prose. The textbook stays in one voice because the two write everything themselves, with no research assistants or junior authors.
Cowen jokes that his own problem is that he enjoys confusing students more.
Tabarrok learned what Cowen's reading was for as his research assistant. Cowen once sent him to fetch ten library books and return them the next day, and he thought it was a power game. Later Cowen read Tabarrok's paper on the spot and cited Arrow 1958.
That is when Tabarrok saw why the books mattered. He says the scarce thing in blogging is having original things to say at a high pace.
Tabarrok can take breaks because Cowen keeps the blog running. Tabarrok feels no pressure to post every day because Cowen does. Since 2003 they have not missed a day in almost 20 years, with four to five posts on essentially every day.
He thinks a new blog needs two or three people to supply something new daily.
Tabarrok gets ideas in the shower, Cowen from conversation. Around 2000 Tabarrok imagined scanning a barcode with a phone. He found three patents on it already, which pushed him to write about the patent system.
He tells students to talk ideas through with good partners and notice when an interesting one appears.
He learned from Cowen to kill a draft and rewrite it. A chapter Cowen had shared with him came back weeks later completely different. Tabarrok calls the habit "a LeBron kind of thing": write it again until it is right.
Cowen has about 2,500 unpublished book pages, mostly not good but not truly terrible.
His one disappointment is that readers never go back to the archive. Readers treat the blog like a newspaper, so good posts fade and nobody returns to them.
Tabarrok says there is a lot to learn from going back through the archive.
Tabarrok calls professor the greatest job ever and wants to spread good economic thinking. He says most of the world has not caught up to Adam Smith. The blog shows students what a life of ideas looks like.
Students arrive at George Mason saying they have read the blog since age 12, and some are now getting PhDs.
Tabarrok argues patent law ignores the cost of innovation versus imitation. A first pill costs a billion dollars and the second costs about 50 cents. Economists defend patents as a monopoly that lets the first inventor recoup that cost, yet actual patent law never discusses it.
He asked why a bare idea can be patented at all when theory says patents should reward high innovation costs.
He proposes patent terms of 3, 10 and 20 years tied to R&D spending. A three-year patent is granted quickly. A 10 or 20-year patent requires showing real R&D spending.
The tiers tie the length of monopoly to the cost it is meant to repay. The idea grew into a paper he wrote.
His TED talk argues ideas, not goods, drive growth. The talk's line is "One apple feeds one man, but an idea can feed the world." It builds on Paul Romer's work on the importance of ideas for growth.
He is excited by the new scientists and engineers in India and China, which raises the world's stock of R&D workers. Moving people off subsistence farms into idea work creates massive externalities that benefit others.
He sees the internet opening the center of the idea world to anyone. A rural reader with a phone can sit in the capital of America in terms of ideas. Old institutions still use the internet superficially, with PDFs and a comms-team Twitter feed.
Tabarrok and Cowen say the power of the written word has never been higher and the openness of discourse has never been greater.