Megan McArdle was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and yes, she does enjoy her lattes, as well as the occasional extra dry skim milk cappuccino. Her checkered work history includes three start-ups, four years as a technology project manager for a boutique consulting firm, a summer as an associate at an investment bank, and a year spent as sort of an executive copy girl for one of the disaster recovery firms at Ground Zero . . . all before the age of thirty.
While working at Ground Zero, she started Live from the WTC, a blog focused on economics, business, and cooking. She may or may not have been the first major economics blogger, depending on whether we are allowed to throw outlying variables such as Brad Delong out of the set. From there it was but a few steps down the slippery slope to freelance journalism. For the past four years she has worked in various capacities for The Economist, where she wrote about economics and oversaw the founding of Free Exchange, the magazine's economics blog. She has also maintained her own blog, Asymmetrical Information, which moved to The Atlantic Monthly, along with its owner, in August 2007.
Megan holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from the University of Chicago. After a lifetime as a New Yorker, she now resides in northwest Washington DC, where she is still trying to figure out what one does with an apartment larger than 400 square feet.
Her latest writings can be found on the Megan McArdle blog, Asymmetrical Information.
March 2010
Everyone knows that people without health insurance are more likely to die. But are they?
January/February 2010
Commercial real estate is dominated by financial professionals, not hustlers looking for a quick flip. So why is the market about to melt down?
December 2009
Finance guru Dave Ramsey wins followers with a simple message: find God and lose your credit cards.
November 2009
Will the Great Recession finally end our misguided obsession with gross domestic product?
October 2009
What do investment bankers, wedding planners, funeral directors, and movie-trailer voice-over artists have in common? High fees for high-stakes, once-in-a-lifetime deals.
September 2009
The Sage of Omaha has redefined the idea of value investing. But will its principles survive his inevitable passing?
July/August 2009
Even in a depression, it seems, Americans won’t stop feathering their nests.
June 2009
Bankruptcy helps the undeserving—and that’s the way it should be.
December 2008
Map: A visual guide to economic calamity.
April 2008
Why even the most-dubious statistics influence our thinking.
January/February 2008
What non-Boomers have to fear.