Note to Self: Tax and Spending Multipliers

Is there any way to interpret Greg Mankiw's Sunday New Yotk Times other than as an elbow to Chtistie's ribs while he thinks the ref's eye is elsewhere?

Christie certainly does not believe that tax multipliers are twice the size of spending multipliers.

Comments

[Tomas]

Why yes, yes there is! Greg Mankiw is an economist that economist, like you Prof. Delong, for some reason respects. That means that he wont be called out for "foul play" in such a way by his guild that people will pay attention. Since mainly economist understand the details of the debate, ordinary people will come away with the "reasonable people disagree" feeling, and thus there is no "ref" for rightwing economists who arent mad austrians.

Why oh why cant we get tougher center-left economist?

[Brian J]

Brad,

I've been meaning to ask you this over e-mail, but perhaps I'll ask it here so others who may have an insight can answer. Generally speaking, Mankiw has been claiming that the Romers are less sympathetic to standard Democratic tax claims than some other economists who would advise them. I don't know what to think of the paper that everyone keeps citing, because I haven't read it yet. But I do remember that Christina Romer and her husband, along with you and what seems like the entire economics faculty of Berkeley, were both signatories of the opposition letter sponsored by EPI against the 2003 Bush tax cuts. Although these tax cuts were passed by congress and signed into law before Mankiw became the CEA chair, I don't think it's out of the question to say that he has some connection to them, since he was defending them in his public White House role. He's also had a role in advising candidates who have proposed similar policies, meaning Mitt Romney.

How can the two be reconciled? I'm going to assume that this petition which had a lot of signatures wasn't spread around like a chain e-mail and that people knew what they were signing. It seems like a pretty big leap to imply that someone went from being dead set against the standard Bush/Republican tax policy to being not so far away from supporting it.

[Noah]

Greg Mankiw - slowly descending from top-level academic to Republican party hack?

[the idler]

Fret not, my friends, Nate Silver has this covered at 538.

[spencer]

We do have the evidence of the last few years where the Bush tax cuts failed to generate sufficient growth to close the output gap. Trend real GDP growth is 3.5% and the Bush tax policy barely managed to generate one year of above trend growth.

Here we have someone who argued that the Bush tax cuts would generate much more robust results and who argued that the Clinton tax increases would kill the economy being taken seriously when his actual record is one of abject failure.

[Ken Houghton]

Noah - SLOWLY??? Only in the context of if you were on The Challenger or Columbia after the explosion...

(FYI, Per JC Bradbury, Mankiw posted a response to Silver.)

[Neal]

..."Sorting:Delong's Best Work"...

Hmmm....

[AndrewBWAndrewBW]

While we're on the topic of respected economists descending to right-wing hackitude, via Kevin Drum here's Edward Lazear in the Washington Post:

"It does look like a great eight years, aside from the last quarter, unfortunately," Edward P. Lazear, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, said in a recent interview. "In the long term, things look good. The reason things look good is this economy will rebound, and it will rebound strongly. . . . We expect things to turn around, and I would say early in President Obama's administration."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/11/AR2009011102301.html?hpid=topnews

[DaveW]

@Neal: the class of articles he's filed under that is a pretty cute list. He's either misfiled this, or got a good sense of humor.

[Jim Nichols]

I was just trying to figure out Tax and Spending Multipliers today...

I couldn't make heads of tails of the debate as a noneconomist--(i.e. what I was finding said "reasonable people disagree" even though my gut is saying "not in the least bit")

I just can't find much on how to defend my "not in the least bit" at a deeper level...

Where do I need to turn regarding this issue?

[MattYoung]

Where is Art Laffer when we need him.

[Noah]

In his latest blog post, Mankiw cites KEVIN HASSETT as a stimulus skeptic.

How the mighty have fallen.

[John Emerson]

Building on what Tomas said, with attention both to Mankiw and to Lazear, I am again confirmed in my belief that economics has no standards. Once you've been admitted into the profession, nothing you can do or say can ger you defrocked or disbarred. It might be said that the profession of economics does not exist as such.

Especially because economists apparently aren't even judged at all by things they do in the real world where their mistakes can have disastrous consequences for millions, but only by their research publications. Its as though the medical profession had strict standards for researchers and textbook authors, but none at all for practicing physicians.

[David]

As someone else mentioned. Go see a non-economist eviserate Mankiw's piece at www.fivethirtyeight.com

[Leigh Caldwell]

Actually Nate Silver does have a degree in economics (from Chicago). Broadly speaking, Nate seems to be right to skewer Mankiw's (ab)use of Christina Romer's research.

I do think it's fair for Mankiw to question the efficiency of both spending and tax cuts, but he could do it without these tactics.

[A]

So does he get upgraded to the ethically-challenged Republican hack category?