It's an Economist thing. All of their letters to the editor used to be addressed simply to "SIR" as well, a practice they've only done away with just this year

It's an Economist thing. All of their letters to the editor used to be addressed simply to "SIR" as well, a practice they've only done away with just this year. Aside from a couple of pseudonymous regular features in each issue (Bagehot, Schumpeter) there are no bylines. In 2013 they talked a bit about why they choose to operate this way: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/economist-explains-itself-1 http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/ec...