Thoma is best known as a regular columnist for The Fiscal Times through his blog "Economist's View", which Paul Krugman called "the best place by far to keep up with the latest in economic discourse",[1] and as an analyst at CBS MoneyWatch.
Some of Thoma's earliest work deals with real economic activity as related to a number of variables.
In another paper, he concludes that financial variables such as interest rates are not useful as a predictive measure of future economic activity.
In a later article, Thoma expands on already existing academic literature which suggests surprise regime changes occur on a regular schedule, forming the basis of a political business cycle.
He applies this logic to open economies in order to find that not only is there empirical support for the idea of a political business cycle, but there may yet be more implications for domestic indicators on a partisan basis.