… and not only is it change you can believe in, it is change that is here, right now and at least a day before the other change going around. So the waiting is over.

But first some background. Last week, Core Economics chalked up its 250,000th visitor and its 2000th post. In a few weeks, it will be three years old. It has built up a good base and while it may not have as many readers as Game Theorist, it has a solid footing in the Australian blogosphere.

This is all well and good but I have felt for a long time that there were opportunities to diversify and grow this platform into something more — especially, for writing about Australian economic issues as well as the technology side of this blog. Today, I am very pleased to announce that those changes are here.

First and foremost, Core Economics is going multi-author. There will be eight, regular and semi-regular writers. All of them are academics and most are economists. Let me introduce them to you.

• Stephen King is my long-time collaborator and has, for the past four and a half years, been a commissioner with the ACCC. Today, he takes up a new post as Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at Monash University and so is now free to comment publicly on all issues. Stephen is also returning today as my business partner at CoRE Research. Despite his administrative duties, I expect Stephen will be a daily contributor to the blog.
• Mark Crosby is an associate professor in economics at Melbourne Business School. Mark specialises in macroeconomics and we definitely need more of that expertise right now. Mark also is a regular commentator in the media.
• Kwanghui Lim is a senior lecturer in strategy at Melbourne Business School. Kwang is not an economist but it is hard to tell from the rigour of his research. Kwang specialises in technology strategy and entrepreneurship and has a vast working knowledge of technical issues related to IT. Kwang will add to the technology commentary that I dabble in on this blog.
• Sam Wylie is a senior fellow at Melbourne Business School and a specialist in banking and finance. He has been a regular commentator in the Australian media during the financial crisis and I imagine will continue to provide that commentary here.

All of these authors reside in Australia. But I also figured that some Australians who were academics abroad might, from time to time, want to comment on Australian issues. Happily three of them have agreed to become authors at Core Economics:

• Richard Holden is an assistant professor in economics at Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Richard specialises in contract theory and applied game theory. His undergraduate education was from the University of Sydney.
• Christine Neill is an assistant professor in economics at Wilfrid Laurier University (Ontario, Canada), where she spends most of her research time studying university financing, student aid policies, and individual’s education decisions. Like me, she gained her undergraduate education at the University of Queensland and also, like me, she is a co-author of Andrew Leigh.
• Justin Wolfers  is an associate professor of economics in the Business and Public Policy Department at the Wharton School. Unlike everyone else added today, he is no stranger to blogging, holding a treasured regular slot on the New York Times Freakonomics blog. Core Economics will provide an outlet for Justin to comment on Australian issues as he has done so often in the media in the past.

You can read more detailed bios and access the webpages of all of these new authors here. I am thrilled to have them on board. But rest assured, this is not a sign that I will be blogging less. I intend to maintain the same rate of posts here and elsewhere. The new authors will complement and grow the output of this blog.

So alongside the new multi-author status here, I have completely redesigned the Core Economics site. Many regular readers will see no change if you use a feed reader. However, just in case you want to focus on a feed from a particular author, you can now subscribe to feeds by author. Other than that, I have reorganised the side bars and the look and feel and upgraded the back-end of the blog. It should be a better reading experience for all.

Today marks the start of a new era for Core Economics. I am proud to be adding so many new authors to the blogosphere and hope they find it as rewarding an experience as I have.