#1 - At long last, my newsletter!

Dear subscriber,

Finally! After literally years of fear and hesitation, I’m now jumping out of the cliff by launching this newsletter today. Writing in English about economics is something I wanted to do for a very long time but never dared to—for many reasons, but it won’t surprise you that impostor syndrome ranked high on the list. I’m not sure what happened to make me jump the cliff, but here I am!

So I’m launching my newsletter, good—but to write on what exactly? Well, you’re probably here thanks to Twitter, and so you already know that I’m an economist—or at least, this is what the rumors say. It’s then not a surprise that I will primarily write about, well, economics.

This newsletter isn’t my first one (see here, there and there), and I know from experience that you need time to figure out the topics you want to write about regularly. I don’t want to rush anything, and I want to keep this whole endeavor enjoyable for you and me, so the upcoming months will be exploratory.

So far, I plan to write on agent-based modeling in economics and on topics such as diversity in economics and the studying of economics itself—the discipline, not the economy, something called logology. You may also expect a few things about reproducibility.

I also already have a couple of drafts on coding. Economists do write a lot of code, but usually we don’t take the time to do it in a healthy way—both for the code itself, but also for the person that writes it. I think there are interesting conversations to have here—besides the usual and overall useless “R or Stata” pseudo-debate, as R is obviously way better than anything else. Duh. (Jokes aside, the best software is, in my opinion, the one that allows you to get things done.)

Something I should probably address from day one is that I do not start this newsletter as a hobby. I want this newsletter to stick, and as such it has to be economically sustainable. I will launch a paid version somewhere in the future. Paid members will have access to exclusive content—and probably other perks.

Writing this newsletter is a major undertaking for me. Being able to make a living out of my writing would be awesome—and it would be even better if I don’t have to choose between writing and economics. I’m both an economist and a writer at my core—I’ve been writing since I’m probably 10. And I love economics, I love the community I’ve found on #EconTwitter, and I have the feeling that the best days of the discipline are in front of us.

Yes, launching this newsletter is definitely scary—but also very exciting! I can’t wait to share with you my thoughts.

See you in the next issue!

The Picture Moment

If you follow me on Twitter, you probably already know that I take my fair share of pictures. I want to share them with you in the newsletter as well. I will try to publish one at the end of every issue.

For the first one, here’s one I took last month of Arc Héré, in Place Stanislas in Nancy—the city where I live. The lighting was pink because October is Pink October in France—or Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Place Stanislas always has magnificent lighting, but this pink one is especially gorgeous!