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krugman.blogs.nytimes.com - 1/6/2009

Stimulus arithmetic (wonkish but important)

— krugman.blogs.nytimes.com — Bit by bit we're getting information on the Obama stimulus plan, enough to start making back-of-the-envelope estimates... of impact. The bottom line is this: we're probably looking at a plan that will shave less than 2 percentage points off the average ... (more) Stimulus arithmetic (wonkish but important)

Government

Gross Domestic Product

Barack Obama

Comments vote downundo vote up Mises Economics Blog found this 1/6/2009found this

5

forbes.com - 1/7/2009

Will The Real Christina Romer Please Stand Up?

— forbes.com — Most people in the incoming Obama administration--and, indeed, most people-- believe that the Keynesian model of the... economy is basically correct. Developed from the theories of John Maynard Keynes, this model maintains that economies can veer away ... (more) Will The Real Christina Romer Please Stand Up?

Government

David Romer

Comments vote downundo vote up EconLog: Library of Economics and Liberty found this 1/7/2009found this

4

econbrowser.com - 1/10/2009

Is the Implementation Lag for Infrastructure Investment a Problem?

— econbrowser.com — There's been a lot of discussion about how the lack of "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects puts a constraint... on government investment spending as a mode for delivering stimulus, since most infrastructure projects take a long time to plan and ... (more) Is the Implementation Lag for Infrastructure Investment ...

Commodities

Gross Domestic Product

Recession

David Romer

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More Spending Stimulus Skeptics
Greg Mankiw's Blog — Gary Becker: Perhaps their [Romer and Bernstein's] estimates of the stimulus provided by direct government spending are in the right ballpark, but I tend to believe that they are excessive. For one thing, the true value of these government programs may be limited because they will be put together hastily, and are likely to contain a lot of political pork and other inefficiencies. For another thing, with unemployment at 7% to 8% of the labor force, it is impossible to target effective spending programs that primarily utilize unemployed workers, or ...

Did Gary Becker Really Argue Complete Crowding-Out?
EconoSpeak — ... is now citing Gary Becker as one who thinks any increase in public infrastructure will have almost no aggregate demand effect ala crowding out but let’s review the portions of Gary’s statement that Greg left out: ...

I was too late to be insulted
SCSUScholars — ... Republican hacks." I'm not sure what disappoints me more: that he called us that, or that he didn't even bother to list me among the people whose quotes he displayed. Yoohoo! Brad! See page 5. Guess he didn't get that far. Nor is his standard really useful. He can only note that Council of Economic Advisors members have not signed on to the list. Yet Greg Mankiw has written about the stimulus in skeptical terms. And what about Nobel Laureates, such as Gary Becker? Who qualifies as being "an economist once upon a time"? Having read ...

Better on Over-Hasty Conversion
EconLog: Library of Economics and Liberty — "When the facts change, I change my mind," say Keynes. But how do you explain people who change their minds when faced by facts they should have known all along? Gary Becker wants to know : As Posner and others have indicated, there appears to have been a huge conversion of economists toward Keynesian deficit spenders, but the evidence that produced such a "conversion" is not apparent (although maybe most economists were closet Keynesians all along). This is a serious recession, but Romer and Bernstein project a peak unemployment rate without the stimulus of about 9%. The ...

What's in the Water in Chicago ?
Angry Bear — Robert Waldmann Gary Becker writes (via Lane Kenworthy who is strangely polite in response) As Posner and others have indicated, there appears to have been a huge conversion of economists toward Keynesian deficit spenders, but the evidence that produced such a "conversion" is not apparent (although maybe most economists were closet Keynesians all along). This is a serious recession, but Romer and Bernstein project a peak unemployment rate without the stimulus of about 9%. The 1981-82 recession had a peak unemployment rate of about 10.5%, but ...

Will Gary Becker Please Return from the Gamma Quadrant?
J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Reality with All Eight Tentacles — ... The Becker-Posner Blog: On the Obama Stimulus Plan-Becker: there appears to have been a huge conversion of economists toward Keynesian deficit spenders, but the evidence that produced such a "conversion" is not apparent (although maybe most economists were closet Keynesians all along). This is a serious recession, but Romer and Bernstein project a peak unemployment rate without the stimulus of about 9%. The 1981-82 recession had a peak unemployment rate of about 10.5%, but there was no apparent major "conversion" of economists at that time. What is so different about the present ...

"Does Stimulus Stimulate?"
Economist's View — ... failure of rebates has shifted the focus to public works and other direct spending measures as a means of stimulating aggregate spending. A study by Obama administration economists Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein predicts that the stimulus plan being debated in Congress will raise the gross domestic product by $1.57 for every $1 spent. Such a multiplier effect has been heavily criticized by a number of top economists, including John Taylor of Stanford, Gary Becker and Eugene Fama of the University of Chicago and Greg Mankiw and ...

Liquidity Traps, Credit Crunches, the Past Two Recessions, and Interest Rates on Long-Term BBB Debt
EconoSpeak — ... senators ignored Bernanke’s warning and voted against releasing the remaining $350 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program money. (So did eight Democrats, mostly liberals, plus independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont.) Fortunately, that left enough supporters, mostly Democrats, to clear the release of the much-needed money. Too many senators shrugged their shoulders at Bernanke’s wise words. As one of the fiscal stimulus critics that Greg Mankiw loves to cite, Gary Becker writes: It is relevant in answering this question that the origins ...