Category: Equitablog

Eric Loomis, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Rhode Island had an immediate, aggressive, and hostile reaction:

Eric Loomis: Shorter Kristof: “I’m Too Lazy to Find the Hundreds of Professors Writing in Prominent Places, So Why Are Academics So Irrelevant?”: “I know Nick Kristof doesn’t put in any actual work to write his columns, but this is ridiculous. Erik Voeten with the obvious rejoinder that, in fact, academics are pretty much everywhere in public policy…”

Scott Lemieux: Corey Robin has much more. Professional disincentives notwithstanding, if you can’t find academics writing for a general audience about issues that interest you it’s almost certainly because you’re not looking.

“Huh?!” I thought. And so I began chasing links…

First, Eric Voeten, Peter F. Krogh Associate Professor of Geopolitics and Justice in World Affairs at Georgetown University:

Eric Voeten: Dear Nicholas Kristof: We are right here!: “Nicholas Kristof has a well-meaning but highly dramatic and one-sided op-ed in the New York Times, desperately shouting out: ‘Professors, We Need You!’

The piece rehashes familiar claims that seem to resonate well on the Times opinion page: academics write in obtuse prose on arcane tiny issues that are of little interest to the public. Even worse, they sometimes use math. Political science is in especially dire shape….

My onetime love, political science, is a particular offender and seems to be trying, in terms of practical impact, to commit suicide.

Continue reading “Perhaps the Single Most Puzzling Thing Published Over the Weekend: The Peculiar Blindness of Nick Kristof: Monday Focus: February 17, 2014” →

From a while ago: The Epicurean Dealmaker: Occupy Galt’s Gulch: “‘Each of us in this room has warmed ourself at fires we did not build, and each of us has drunk from wells we did not dig.’ — Mark Shields, as heard, October 1997….

The exposure and ridicule of hubris among the Great and Good, the not-so-great and not-so-good, and the patently pathetic yet surprisingly lucky has been an overarching concern and even gleeful entertainment in these pages…. To date, what has typically stayed my hand is an acknowledgement that any efforts to puncture the iron-clad self regard of the self-appointed financial elite would be doubly futile… my targets have historically been both too impervious and too self-evidently ridiculous to bother. What has tipped my hand at last has been the appearance, at Megan McArdle’s blog site, of a really excellent guest post by entrepreneur and investor Jim Manzi. Mr. Manzi’s capitalist credentials are indisputable, so I was both impressed and heartened to read the words he excerpted there from his newly published book:

Many entrepreneurs hold the opinion that “I did it all on my own”…. The entrepreneur relies on an ecosystem of venture capitalists, risk-taking purchasers, and so on. This ecosystem itself rests on a deeper foundation of collective, government-led enterprise. The delivery of our software, for example, depended on the existence of the Internet, which is the product of a series of government-sponsored R&D efforts, in combination with subsequent massive private commercial development. Government funding has been essential to much of the university science that entrepreneurs have exploited. Honest courts and police are required for functioning capital markets and protection of assets; physical infrastructure is required for the roads and running water without which we would not spend much time thinking about artificial intelligence software. At the absolute foundation, national armed forces protect the whole system against external aggression. All of our exciting technical and economic innovations ultimately require men to stand watch all night looking through Starlight scopes mounted on assault rifles—and die if necessary—to protect our commercial, law-bound society. Would you do this to protect a billionaire hedge-fund manager who sees his country as nothing more than lines on a map?

Paul Krugman: Fighting the Last Macro War?: “Noah Smith… argues that macroeconomic theorists have been like French generals, always preparing to fight the last war….

First of all, a large part of academic macroeconomics is dominated by real business cycle theorists… still about the stagflation of the 1970s, which is at least two wars back…. Second… what were the macro wars? First there was stagflation… the freshwater guys… stopped there… forever living in 1979…. They never reacted at all to the… disinflation of the 1980s… very costly…. This reality, as much as clever new models, drove the Keynesian revival; the RBC guys paid no attention, and learned nothing…. Keynesians spent a lot of time thereafter focused on price stickiness…. Did this leave them unprepared for the next war? A bit, but actually not so much…. Bank runs have been pretty well understood for a long time…. And policy responded pretty effectively…. Dealing with a persistently depressed economy, with monetary policy constrained by the zero lower bound…. The models rolled out… the predictions… made, about interest rates, inflation, the output effects of fiscal policy, were both counterintuitive to many people and reasonably on target. I just don’t see this as a story of economists unprepared to deal with new events….

Sven Jari Stehn and Jan Hatzius: Fed Should Target Wage Growth: “Low inflation should be indicative of the size of the employment gap.

This approach, however, relies on a tight link between slack and price inflation. And the experience of the last couple of years suggests that price inflation is not very responsive to the employment gap at low levels of inflation and seems to fluctuate quite randomly when we are in the neighborhood of price stability. The behavior of core PCE inflation between 2011 and 2013 is a good example: core inflation rose by a full percentage point during 2011 and then dropped by the same amount in 2013, without any compelling macroeconomic explanation….

While such a [wage-targeting] policy is not perfect — because the wage inflation process, too, is subject to uncertainty — the error band around the paths for the funds rate and unemployment rate is lowered significantly and more so than in the case of increased focus on price inflation. The intuition is simple: because the wage inflation process is more stable than the price inflation process in our estimated model, the former provides a better cross check of labor market slack and thus there is a stronger case for Fed officials to focus on it.

Must-Reads:

1. Paul Krugman: Stupidity in Economic Discourse: “Jonathan Gruber is mad as hell… is not going to take it anymore… is annoyed at Casey Mulligan’s latest, which misrepresents Gruber’s views; mine too. Gruber is right to be mad: that was a disgraceful, deceptive column. But I think you also want to put it into a larger picture: the enduring myth of the stupid progressive economist…. As Gruber documents, [Mulligan] pulls multiple fast ones, asserting things that he says are conclusions of the CBO report when they aren’t–they’re his own views, pulled out of, um, thin air, or maybe someplace else, which he is projecting onto the budget office…. Mulligan tells his readers that both Gruber and I are too dumb or craven to admit that the disincentives to work created by some aspects of the Affordable Care Act impose economic costs. One suspects that Mulligan didn’t actually read either of the pieces he links to. If he had, he would have found this from Gruber: ‘But the likelihood of voluntary reductions in work is not the only issue. The CBO also projects work reduction by individuals who cut back on hours or avoid moving up the job ladder because they don’t want to lose Medicaid eligibility, or because they don’t want to make so much in wages that they would lose tax credits to help pay insurance premiums. Unlike voluntary job leaving, this second kind of work reduction would entail real economic distortions and be a cost, not a benefit.'”

2. Anya Schiffrin: The French way of cancer treatment: “When my father, the editor and writer Andre Schiffrin, was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer last spring, my family assumed we would care for him in New York. But my parents always spent part of each year in Paris…. I… didn’t know what… French healthcare… would be like. I… assumed… better access for the poor and strong primary care. Not better cancer specialists. How could a public hospital in Paris possibly improve on Sloan Kettering?… My parents flew to Paris… found an English-speaking pancreatic cancer specialist and my dad resumed his weekly gemcitabine infusions…. In New York, my father, my mother and I would go to Sloan Kettering every Tuesday around 9:30 a.m. and wind up spending the entire day. They’d take my dad’s blood…. The doctor always ran late… so we’d sit in the waiting room and, well, wait… rush across the street, get takeout and come back to the waiting room… bring books to read… use the Wi-Fi and eat the graham crackers… talk to each other and to the other patients and families… Eventually, we’d see the doctor for a few minutes and my dad would get his chemo. Then, after fighting New York crowds for a cab at rush hour, as my dad stood on the corner of Lexington Avenue feeling woozy, we’d get home by about 5:30 p.m. So imagine my surprise when my parents reported from Paris…. A nurse would come to the house two days before my dad’s treatment day to take his blood. When my dad appeared at the hospital, they were ready… often someone else in the next bed but, most important, there was no waiting. Total time at the Paris hospital each week: 90 minutes.”

3. Doug Irwin: Who Anticipated the Great Depression? Gustav Cassel versus Keynes and Hayek on the Interwar Gold Standard: “The intellectual response to the Great Depression is often portrayed as a battle between the ideas of Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes. Yet both the Austrian and the Keynesian interpretations of the Depression were incomplete. Austrians could explain how a country might get into a depression (bust following a credit-fueled investment boom) but not how to get out of one (liquidation). Keynesians could explain how a country might get out of a depression (government spending on public works) but not how it got into one (animal spirits). By contrast, the monetary approach of Gustav Cassel has been ignored. As early as 1920, Cassel warned that mismanagement of the gold standard could lead to a severe depression. Cassel not only explained how this could occur, but his explanation anticipates the way that scholars today describe how the Great Depression actually occurred. Unlike Keynes or Hayek, Cassel analyzed both how a country could get into a depression (deflation due to tight monetary policies) and how it could get out of one (monetary expansion).”

4. Zack Beauchamp: Three Things Conservatives Wrote This Week That Are Really Good : “Today, we’re launching a new TP Ideas feature…. The goal is… to find the most interesting exemplars of a distinctively right-of-center worldview…. 1) ‘The End Of Sex’ — Kevin Williamson, National Review…. Williamson’s concern is that the pitiless market logic on display during the Adult Video News is having a corrosive effect on human sexuality…. Williamson’s dispatch is not a jeremiad…. Rather, in the best conservative spirit, Williamson offers evidence of progressive change’s unintended consequences and invites its champions to reckon with what they have wrought. 2) ‘Why Is Janet Yellen So Concerned And Disturbed About Income Inequality?’ — Jim Pethokoukis, AEI Ideas…. Janet Yellen believes inequality is ‘one of the most disturbing trends facing the nation at the present time’. Pethokoukis thinks that’s rubbish…. 3) ‘Everything Is Politics to the Right, Even Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Death’ — James Poulos, The Daily Beast…. Poulos’ piece is… an attempt to defend a distinctively conservative approach to mass culture…. Where conservative journalism once stood athwart the impulse to analyze everything first as politics, invoking the primacy of philosophy and religion, today we see analysts on the right confidently assaulting ‘liberal culture’ on reflexively ideological grounds—casting aside their most, and perhaps only, legitimate way of viewing the world. The results are not just ugly or incorrect; they lead conservatives astray from the kind of ennobling wisdom that once kept them, and humanity, afloat. The resulting argument — which also includes an extended discussion of The Lego Movie‘s ideology — is a very smart way of showing that the conservative veneration of tradition need not be a nostalgia for oppressive social orders lost, but a source of insight into our shared social present.”

Continue reading “Things to Read at Lunchtime on February 15, 2014” →

Zack Beauchamp: Three Things Conservatives Wrote This Week That Are Really Good : “Today, we’re launching a new TP Ideas feature….

The goal is… to find the most interesting exemplars of a distinctively right-of-center worldview…. 1) ‘The End Of Sex’ — Kevin Williamson, National Review…. Williamson’s concern is that the pitiless market logic on display during the Adult Video News is having a corrosive effect on human sexuality…. Williamson’s dispatch is not a jeremiad…. Rather, in the best conservative spirit, Williamson offers evidence of progressive change’s unintended consequences and invites its champions to reckon with what they have wrought. 2) ‘Why Is Janet Yellen So Concerned And Disturbed About Income Inequality?’ — Jim Pethokoukis, AEI Ideas…. Janet Yellen believes inequality is ‘one of the most disturbing trends facing the nation at the present time’. Pethokoukis thinks that’s rubbish…. 3) ‘Everything Is Politics to the Right, Even Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Death’ — James Poulos, The Daily Beast…. Poulos’ piece is… an attempt to defend a distinctively conservative approach to mass culture…. Where conservative journalism once stood athwart the impulse to analyze everything first as politics, invoking the primacy of philosophy and religion, today we see analysts on the right confidently assaulting ‘liberal culture’ on reflexively ideological grounds—casting aside their most, and perhaps only, legitimate way of viewing the world. The results are not just ugly or incorrect; they lead conservatives astray from the kind of ennobling wisdom that once kept them, and humanity, afloat. The resulting argument — which also includes an extended discussion of The Lego Movie‘s ideology — is a very smart way of showing that the conservative veneration of tradition need not be a nostalgia for oppressive social orders lost, but a source of insight into our shared social present.

Paul Krugman: Stupidity in Economic Discourse: “Jonathan Gruber is mad as hell… is not going to take it anymore… is annoyed at Casey Mulligan’s latest, which misrepresents Gruber’s views; mine too.

Gruber is right to be mad: that was a disgraceful, deceptive column. But I think you also want to put it into a larger picture: the enduring myth of the stupid progressive economist…. As Gruber documents, [Mulligan] pulls multiple fast ones, asserting things that he says are conclusions of the CBO report when they aren’t–they’re his own views, pulled out of, um, thin air, or maybe someplace else, which he is projecting onto the budget office…. Mulligan tells his readers that both Gruber and I are too dumb or craven to admit that the disincentives to work created by some aspects of the Affordable Care Act impose economic costs. One suspects that Mulligan didn’t actually read either of the pieces he links to. If he had, he would have found this from Gruber: “But the likelihood of voluntary reductions in work is not the only issue. The CBO also projects work reduction by individuals who cut back on hours or avoid moving up the job ladder because they don’t want to lose Medicaid eligibility, or because they don’t want to make so much in wages that they would lose tax credits to help pay insurance premiums. Unlike voluntary job leaving, this second kind of work reduction would entail real economic distortions and be a cost, not a benefit.”

Continue reading “Morning Must-Read: Paul Krugman: Why Having a Technocratic Dialogue These Days Is Very, Very Difficult” →

Anya Schiffrin: The French way of cancer treatment:

When my father, the editor and writer Andre Schiffrin, was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer last spring, my family assumed we would care for him in New York. But my parents always spent part of each year in Paris…. I… didn’t know what… French healthcare… would be like. I… assumed… better access for the poor and strong primary care. Not better cancer specialists. How could a public hospital in Paris possibly improve on Sloan Kettering?… My parents flew to Paris… found an English-speaking pancreatic cancer specialist and my dad resumed his weekly gemcitabine infusions…. In New York, my father, my mother and I would go to Sloan Kettering every Tuesday around 9:30 a.m. and wind up spending the entire day. They’d take my dad’s blood…. The doctor always ran late… so we’d sit in the waiting room and, well, wait… rush across the street, get takeout and come back to the waiting room… bring books to read… use the Wi-Fi and eat the graham crackers… talk to each other and to the other patients and families… Eventually, we’d see the doctor for a few minutes and my dad would get his chemo. Then, after fighting New York crowds for a cab at rush hour, as my dad stood on the corner of Lexington Avenue feeling woozy, we’d get home by about 5:30 p.m. So imagine my surprise when my parents reported from Paris…. A nurse would come to the house two days before my dad’s treatment day to take his blood. When my dad appeared at the hospital, they were ready… often someone else in the next bed but, most important, there was no waiting. Total time at the Paris hospital each week: 90 minutes.

Continue reading “Morning Must-Read: Anya Schiffrin on the Death of Her Father Andre Schiffrin in Paris” →

Doug Irwin: Who Anticipated the Great Depression? Gustav Cassel versus Keynes and Hayek on the Interwar Gold Standard:

The intellectual response to the Great Depression is often portrayed as a battle between the ideas of Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes. Yet both the Austrian and the Keynesian interpretations of the Depression were incomplete. Austrians could explain how a country might get into a depression (bust following a credit-fueled investment boom) but not how to get out of one (liquidation). Keynesians could explain how a country might get out of a depression (government spending on public works) but not how it got into one (animal spirits). By contrast, the monetary approach of Gustav Cassel has been ignored. As early as 1920, Cassel warned that mismanagement of the gold standard could lead to a severe depression. Cassel not only explained how this could occur, but his explanation anticipates the way that scholars today describe how the Great Depression actually occurred. Unlike Keynes or Hayek, Cassel analyzed both how a country could get into a depression (deflation due to tight monetary policies) and how it could get out of one (monetary expansion).

Continue reading “Morning Must-Read: Doug Irwin: Who Anticipated the Great Depression? Gustav Cassel versus Keynes and Hayek on the Interwar Gold Standard” →

Andrea Pescatori, Damiano Sandri, and John Simon: Debt and Growth: Is There a Magic Threshold?:

Using a novel empirical approach and an extensive dataset developed by the Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF, we find no evidence of any particular debt threshold above which medium-term growth prospects are dramatically compromised. Furthermore, we find the debt trajectory can be as important as the debt level in understanding future growth prospects, since countries with high but declining debt appear to grow equally as fast as countries with lower debt. Notwithstanding this, we find some evidence that higher debt is associated with a higher degree of output volatility.

Continue reading “Morning Must-Read: Andrea Pescatori et al.: Debt and Growth: Is There a Magic Threshold?” →