If you think that his website is amazing, wait till you meet Dr. J. Bradford DeLong.  A rather concise but jovial man, Dr. DeLong aims to understand how we can run the world better, or as he put it, less badly.  It is no surprise then to find his website covering a range of topics from global warming to under-funded educational systems to the 1997 Asian crisis to  economic development.  Nor is it surprising to find the walls to his Evans office completely lined with shelves of neatly stacks of books.  In many instances, we lack the reasoning as to explain the failures or problems that arise within a society, and thus, as Dr. DeLong explains, there is an increasing need to gather more information to better understand our society.

While mainly interested in macroeconomic history, particularly since the 1850s, Dr. DeLong has asked numerous researchable questions such as "How do we evaluate that financial markets are doing a good job in the United States?" and "What are the determinants of economic growth?"  Conducting previous research at the bottom floor of the library, he admits that he finds himself less at the library today with his busy schedule and more at the computer using online data sources.  His advice to potential economic researchers: narrow your topic as fast as you can.

If you were to describe economics into one word, what would it be?  "Fun," says Dr. DeLong as he reflects his enjoyment in the "aspect that we hold the keys to the riddles of history and society."  So with an open mind and an open heart and his online semi-daily journal handy, Dr. DeLong stands guard to take the opportunities to unlock the many unknown facets of our world economy.
 

          Professor J. Bradford DeLong's interests in economics include economic history, economic growth, monetary economics, and financial economics. Being interested in a variety of topics is important because those topics keep you intellectually alive. Professor DeLong argued, "If you're not interested in a bunch of things, it's hard to keep interested in any one thing. Breadth of thought is necessary if you're to look at things freshly."

When asked if he has a particular topic that he's more interested in, Professor DeLong replied that his topic of interest switches from moment to moment and from time to time. "You don't really know what's going to be important in the future. People's interest changes. A hot topic this year might be a dull topic the next year," he stated.

Professor DeLong's criteria for choosing his questions include (1) questions he's interested in and (2) questions he thinks he can answer. Professor DeLong admitted that a lot of questions he's trying to answer aren't "important," per se. Most of his questions are on topics he's personally interested about. He tends to pursue whichever question he's interested in at the moment.

The data is the most important part of the research. Professor DeLong's favorite place for data is in the bottom basement of Doe Library because he depends mostly on books. He uses online sources for some modern questions, but he relies on books for older questions.

-         Professor DeLong was a very personable and approachable individual.

-         Professor DeLong imagined himself being a professor. Not in economics, but a professor in physics.

    Professor Delong uses his interests as a guide to find areas to research.  Usually, a strong negative reaction to an idea or
argument inspires him to investigate the ideas himself or to develop research questions.  Professor Delong said he often has
an "allergic" reaction to papers that use guaranteed data to generate results that support a particular author's thesis.  He
insists on doing proper research in the library and reading books and data that nobody else has looked at.  Proper due
diligence on a topic is key to successfully researching any topic.

    Professor Delong usually finds most of his data using primary source data books put out by contemporary government
sources as well as historical primary data sources believed to be reliable.  He does not feel that online resources are very
good to do historical comparisons.  Because there is so much information published, it is important for Professor Delong to
look at information that maybe someone has not had a chance to look at and properly examine.

    Professor Delong seemed like an approachable individual who would be an excellent source for research topics that
wanted to use historical analysis to find information on contemporary issues and policies to determine how certain events
affected the financial markets or business cycle.  Because he uses the library for much of his research, he would be an
excellent source for finding out information about the library and what statistical and other data books are available.