Economics Gone Wrong. Very Badly Wrong Indeed: Some Fairly-Recent Should- and Must-Reads...
Martin Sandbu: The devastating cost of central banks’ caution: "Timidity on monetary policy since 2008 has been as costly as the financial crisis...
Event studies are very dangerous tools if you truly seek robust identification for policies that operate through expectational channels: Joseph Gagnon: QE Skeptics Overstate Their Case: "David Greenlaw, James Hamilton, Ethan Harris, and Kenneth West... argued that the consensus of previous studies overstates the effects of quantitative easing (QE) on long-term interest rates...
I am being told that George Borjas still does not understand—or at least says he does not understand—the force of this critique. Can that possibly be true?: Michael A. Clemens and Jennifer Hunt: The Labor Market Effects of Refugee Waves: Reconciling Conflicting Results: "The fraction of blacks is much higher in the post- than pre-Boatlift years in Borjas’s Miami sample...
Extremely wise and interesting on how the more empirical reality tells the Trumpists to mark their beliefs to market, the more desperate they are to avoid doing so: John Holbo: Epistemic Sunk Costs and the Extraordinary, Populist Delusions of Crowds?: "Here’s a thought.... The first rule of persuasion is: make your audience want to believe...
Paul Krugman: Uses and Abuses of Economic Formalism: "Gruen... really, really doesn’t like the formalization of economies of scale and imperfect competition in trade that went along with the rise of the 'new trade theory'...
I agree with Noah Smith that a lot of interesting work is being done in academic economics—even in macro. I agree with the Economist that academic economists are more-or-less neutralized at best in the public sphere, with bad actors, bad methodology, and bad ideologues drowning out information. I agree that economics should do a much better job of policing its own internal community and standing within it via what my colleague Alan Auerbach calls "obloquy". I agree that economics should do a much better job of managing its discursive modes, in both empirical and theoretical work. But I do wish the Economist would turn its microscope on what purports to be economic journalism more: Noah Smith: OK, so The Economist has an ongoing series of articles about the shortcomings of the economics profession: "https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21740403-first-series-columns-professions-shortcomings-economists...
Noah Smith: Supply and Demand Does a Poor Job of Explaining Depressed Wages: "The standard framework that economists traditionally used to understand job markets is just supply and demand...
Am I wrong to be appalled at how there are too many economists whose knowledge of models carries with it negative knowledge about the economy?: Paul Krugman: Immaculate Inflation Strikes Again: "We’re currently well above historical estimates of full employment, and inflation remains subdued. Could unemployment fall to 3.5% without accelerating inflation? Honestly, we don’t know...
The well-worth reading Ryan Cooper trolls me: Ryan Cooper: It's time to normalize Karl Marx: "For elite American economists, Marx has long been viewed as absolutely anathema, if not some kind of demon...
Never forget how pig-ignorant stupid the High Priests of Liquidationist Chicago were in 2009: Paul Krugman (2009): The lost generation: "Matthew Yglesias catches Eugene Fama making a strange assertion...
Mark Thoma: On the 2009-2015 Dark Age of Macroeconomics: Weekend Reading
Paul Krugman (2012): Economics in the Crisis: Weekend Reading
Robert Skidelsky: The Advanced Economies’ Lost Decade: "Policy interventions immediately following the 2008 crash did make a difference.... The 2008 collapse was as steep as that of 1929, but it lasted for a much shorter time...
Noah Smith: Rational Markets Theory Keeps Running Into Irrational Humans: "To many young people, the idea of efficient financial markets—the idea that...
Paul Krugman: Unicorns of the Intellectual Right: "Economics... a field with a relatively strong conservative presence.... [But] trying to find influential conservative economic intellectuals is basically a hopeless task...
Justin Fox: Beware Economists Who Warn of an Entitlement Explosion: "A quintet of notable Republican economists... Michael J. Boskin, John H. Cochrane, John F. Cogan, George P. Shultz and John B. Taylor...
