New TVHE author: Introducing Shamubeel Eaqub

I see that Offsetting Behaviour has already beaten me to it, but in case you haven’t seen it I’d like to warmly introduce Shamubeel Eaqub as a new TVHE contributor.  He is joining Agnitio, Goonix, James, and Myself as “potentially regular writers” – which implies having the ability to just write something on here whenever we get the itch.

Most of our readers will already know Shamubeel – he is a Principal Economist at NZIER, and has expended a lot of effort discussing and communicating economic ideas in public in recent years. I have no doubt he’ll introduce his own style, and set of interests, into the pool of TVHE posts – and we’ll all be much better off for it.

The fact he works at NZIER of course makes him an ex-workmate of James and a bitter competitor to me – but even so I’m pretty excited about his contributions to the discussion here!

He has already posted on National’s housing policy and discussing creative destruction with reference to Blackberry phones – although not in this way.

I like to think that Shamubeel was keen to join us after his strong performance in the “sexiest economist” competition, coming in fourth place.  Perhaps by entering the econoblogsphere he’ll be able to egg up enough support to break into the top three next time?