Research

[fowlertm]

Francis,

I came across your post on the Big Think website about what the rest of the world could learn from Eastern Europe, and what struck me was your knowledge of the tax rates of various European countries. As of this writing I'm living in East Asia, and I'm interested in the ways you go about doing your research on national economics. I'd like to learn more about the country I live in and the ones that surround it. Is there anything you can recommend which generalizes to most or all countries, any sources you have found to be especially reliable, ways of going about buying the right books or browsing the right websites? I would like to fill in the touristy stuff with a high-level, in-depth view of Asia as a region.

[FrancisTapon]

I used many sources to write The Hidden Europe. Books and Wikipedia are obvious sources to start off with. For statistics and general knowledge, here are a few other great websites to conduct research:

CIA Factbook has facts about countries that
Wolfram Alpha is a great engine to compute the GDP of one country vs. another. Or geographic size comparisons. Historical trends.
The Economist is an excellent, relatively objective international news source.
Gallup and Pew Research conduct unbiased, scientific worldwide polls.

Lastly, the United Nations has many great data rich international reports.

My book has hundreds of footnotes that cite my sources. However, I often wouldn't cite sources if the fact is not controversial.

[fowlertm]

Francis,

Thanks very much for the reply. It sounds like your research is pretty straightforward and reliant upon resources I can track down. I will probably check your book out to dig through the citations. I have two follow-up questions for you which are a little deeper.

First, how do you interpret and integrate the research that you do? I realize that this is the sort of question that economists of various schools have spent thousands of pages thinking about, but often times people who take a broad cross-sectional view have a handful of techniques they use and reuse for answering these types of questions.

Second, do you have any advice for someone trying to reconcile big-picture information with what they observe minute-by-minute and week-by-week in the people around them? How does knowing the history of a people or the economics of their country inform your interactions with them, if it does at all? I have region-level knowledge and then I have person-level knowledge, but getting them to cohere in a useful way seems to be a challenge. Clearly the members of a culture are not identical copies of one another, but there must be trends which separate say, Albanians from Koreans, or else it seems there wouldn't be much point in talking about "culture" at all.

[FrancisTapon]

First, how do you interpret and integrate the research that you do? I realize that this is the sort of question that economists of various schools have spent thousands of pages thinking about, but often times people who take a broad cross-sectional view have a handful of techniques they use and reuse for answering these types of questions.

I look for common threads/themes/statistics and remove/ignore most outliers.

I also discount books/statistics when I feel like the author may be biased. For example, when researching Kosovo, I would listen to what Serbs and Albanians say, but take their research with a grain of salt. Instead, I would put more trust in scholars from outside the Balkans (e.g. USA/UK).

Second, do you have any advice for someone trying to reconcile big-picture information with what they observe minute-by-minute and week-by-week in the people around them? How does knowing the history of a people or the economics of their country inform your interactions with them, if it does at all? I have region-level knowledge and then I have person-level knowledge, but getting them to cohere in a useful way seems to be a challenge. Clearly the members of a culture are not identical copies of one another, but there must be trends which separate say, Albanians from Koreans, or else it seems there wouldn't be much point in talking about "culture" at all.

I agree it's tricky. I'd take anecdotal information with a grain of salt. I'd place more emphasis on surveys (e.g., Gallup/Pew Research), which capture far more peoples' opinion than your individual efforts can. Combine that with historical analysis, then you'll accurately capture the culture.

Given your interest and questions, I highly recommend reading my book. It is right up your alley.