Economic page turners

Björn Frank

No 201126, MAGKS Papers on Economics from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung)

Abstract: Economic page turners like Freakonomics are well written and there is much to be learned from them – not only about economics, but also about writing techniques. Their authors know how to build up suspense, i.e., they make readers want to know what comes. An uncountable number of pages in books and magazines are filled with advice on writing reportages or suspense novels. While many of the tips are specific to the respective genres, some carry over to economic page turners in an instructive way. After introducing some of these writing tools, I discuss whether these and other aspects of good writing lead to a biased presentation of economic theory and practice. I conclude that, whatever the problems with certain economic page turners may be, they are not due to the need to write in an accessible, appealing way.

Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe and nep-pke
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https://www.uni-marburg.de/en/fb02/research-groups ... rs/26-2011_frank.pdf First version, 2011 (application/pdf)

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Journal Article: Economic page turners (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mar:magkse:201126

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