I've been fortunate enough to have multiple careers. After graduating from college (Swarthmore) and graduate school (Yale) in economics, I got a job as a college professor (Columbia University). I mostly taught economic history and international finance, but had some fun teaching law and economics at Columbia's Law School. College professors are partly valued for their research; I published technical articles on subjects ranging from the spread of the cotton economy in pre-Civil-War America to the economic impact of the Vietnam War to the deterrent effect (really, the lack thereof) of capital punishment.I'd been writing about economic policy for magazines since my days in graduate school. And I had written one non-technical book about economic growth, too. So when The New York Times offered me a position on its editorial board writing editorials about economics, I leapt at the opportunity. Had a terrific time generating opinions. And I even think I did some good, in ways big and small - everything from advancing the cause of airline deregulation to making it possible to buy reading glasses without a prescription in New York State.A decade later, I moved from the editorial board to The New York Times' newsroom to report and analyze the economic news, to write a weekly column about economics and to roam other sections of the newspaper in search of cool things to write about. Among the coolest: going to Ferrari driving school in Italy and flying a MiG-25 (I had lots of help from a test pilot) at a field 50 miles from Moscow. To keep busy in my spare time, I wrote automobile reviews for The New York Times and published a slew of books on personal finance for small investors. As you'll see if you read my new one, WHERE TO PUT YOUR MONEY NOW, I write about the subject like an economic journalist - lots of analysis, very little jargon, no fantasies.Then, a decade ago, I got an offer I couldn't refuse to edit my own magazine about economic policy, the Milken Institute Review. The Institute, which is located in Santa Monica, California, is non-profit and non-partisan, and has given me terrific leeway to draw on experts from both inside the organization and among independent professional economics. I still do some economic research (mostly about energy and climate change) and I write the occasional opinion piece about economics - see my stuff in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and a neat website called the Economists' Voice.I live in Southern California with my wife (a college professor specializing in literature), teenage daughter, two dogs and five, very pampered chickens. Oh - any you might just catch my automobile reviews, which still appear occasionally in The New York Times (right behind the sports section on Sundays)