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What is the point in beating a dead horse ? Krugman is often wrong. He got a nobel prize, good for him, but we should not take his opinions - or the opinion of

by guylhem 14y ago

What is the point in beating a dead horse ? Krugman is often wrong. He got a nobel prize, good for him, but we should not take his opinions - or the opinion of any nobel prize or other authority figures - as words from the gods. Remember, past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results - and this is as good as an example as it gets. At least I reckon he made a testable prediction this time. We are all human and faillible. What authority figures may provide is better calibration - ie not being humble or arrogant, but say how good their prediction is, and not be wrong too often (http://yudkowsky.net/rational/technical http://yudkowsky.net/rational/technical). At least, we should hold them to that standard since their past declarations are available to the public and can be tested against current results.

stcredzero 14y ago
> Krugman is often wrong. He got a nobel price, Being wrong now and then is excusable, clearly.
- guylhem 14y ago
  As someone else said, "He's gotten remarkably good at not making testable recommendations or predictions." With a bad spirit, one could say he got medal for that. Yet his work on new trade theory in international commerce, and how the european union data contradicted standard HOS theory is quite interesting. He should have kept to that. But when your self proclaimed intention is to be a voice from the left (or the right, or anything) and have political impact instead of academic impact, you may have to take distance from reality :-/
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    My main point was the spelling error.
    - guylhem 14y ago
      Oops. I stand corrected! 11pm and going to bed here, but I fill fix the typo first. It could make a bad taste joke, since it's obviously not for sale ;-)
kevinskii 14y ago
He's gotten remarkably good at not making testable recommendations or predictions. If an economy collapses, it's because the government didn't do any stimulus spending. If the government tries to stimulate but its economy still collapses, it's because it didn't stimulate enough. I don't think he's ever gone on record to say specifically how much stimulus is needed. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
- skylan_q 14y ago
  He's gotten remarkably good at not making testable recommendations or predictions. That's the problem with empirical economics with idealistic theories. You can't separate the variables, so there's always another excuse to weasel yourself out of having your hypothesis nullified.
- mikeyouse 14y ago
  You're wrong. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/stimulus-arithmetic-wonkish-but-important/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/stimulus-arithme... http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/the-story-of-the-stimulus/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/the-story-of-the... http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/how-did-we-know-the-stimulus-was-too-small/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/how-did-we-know-... http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/stimulus-issues/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/stimulus-issues/
  - kevinskii 14y ago
    In most of these links he argues, true to form, that a certain stimulus proposal wasn't big enough. But nowhere did he actually say how big he thought it should be. The closest he came was in your first link, in which he demonstrated how one might theoretically calculate an adequate stimulus size. Yet this calculation depends on first choosing a value for the Okun's Law coefficient, and nowhere did he say what he thinks it would be. He just picked an "optimistic" value for the sake of demonstration. This single ambiguity easily gives him a few hundred billion dollars in wiggle room.
    - 14y ago
skylan_q 14y ago
I can give him a break on predictions, as no one can be good at predictions on this sort of thing. Just lucky. What really bothers me is what he advocates... To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble. Judging by Mr. Greenspan's remarkably cheerful recent testimony, he still thinks he can pull that off. But the Fed chairman's crystal ball has been cloudy lately; remember how he urged Congress to cut taxes to head off the risk of excessive budget surpluses? And a sober look at recent data is not encouraging. -Paul Krugman, 2002 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip...
- guylhem 14y ago
  Sometime you get what you pray for :-/ Krugman wanted the housing bubble, he got it. Please tell me, has he asked for any education bubble? I'm not really following what he says unless it's too wonky (like he last piece about Adam Smith hating bitcoin, because you know Adam Smith could have predicted bitcoin and peer to peer and computers http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/adam-smith-hates-bitcoin/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/adam-smith-hates...)
  - skylan_q 14y ago
    Haven't seen him say anything about helping fund the education bubble. But then again, he believes all sorts of silly things. Like if you print money and pay people to dig and bury holes over and over again, you can revive an economy.
    - nhaehnle 14y ago
      Like if you print money and pay people to dig and bury holes over and over again, you can revive an economy. It is pretty obvious that the economy can be in a state where doing this will revive the economy - because of the indirect positive effect on aggregate demand. Is is also pretty obvious that there will always be better ways to revive an economy - such as by paying people to do something that is considered to be useful. Then you get both the indirect positive effect on aggregate demand and you're directly getting something useful done (whether it's fixing the infrastructure, cleaning up rivers, taking care of the elderly, or painting pretty pictures really doesn't matter that much). Keynes actually implied all this in the often quote that Keynes-haters like to bring up again and again without properly understanding it.
zimpenfish 14y ago
You can swap "often wrong" for "economist".

by guylhem 14y ago

stcredzero 14y ago

> Krugman is often wrong. He got a nobel price, Being wrong now and then is excusable, clearly.

guylhem 14y ago
As someone else said, "He's gotten remarkably good at not making testable recommendations or predictions." With a bad spirit, one could say he got medal for that. Yet his work on new trade theory in international commerce, and how the european union data contradicted standard HOS theory is quite interesting. He should have kept to that. But when your self proclaimed intention is to be a voice from the left (or the right, or anything) and have political impact instead of academic impact, you may have to take distance from reality :-/
- stcredzero 14y ago
  My main point was the spelling error.
  - guylhem 14y ago
    Oops. I stand corrected! 11pm and going to bed here, but I fill fix the typo first. It could make a bad taste joke, since it's obviously not for sale ;-)

kevinskii 14y ago

He's gotten remarkably good at not making testable recommendations or predictions. If an economy collapses, it's because the government didn't do any stimulus spending. If the government tries to stimulate but its economy still collapses, it's because it didn't stimulate enough. I don't think he's ever gone on record to say specifically how much stimulus is needed. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

skylan_q 14y ago
He's gotten remarkably good at not making testable recommendations or predictions. That's the problem with empirical economics with idealistic theories. You can't separate the variables, so there's always another excuse to weasel yourself out of having your hypothesis nullified.
mikeyouse 14y ago
You're wrong. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/stimulus-arithmetic-wonkish-but-important/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/stimulus-arithme... http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/the-story-of-the-stimulus/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/the-story-of-the... http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/how-did-we-know-the-stimulus-was-too-small/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/how-did-we-know-... http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/stimulus-issues/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/stimulus-issues/
- kevinskii 14y ago
  In most of these links he argues, true to form, that a certain stimulus proposal wasn't big enough. But nowhere did he actually say how big he thought it should be. The closest he came was in your first link, in which he demonstrated how one might theoretically calculate an adequate stimulus size. Yet this calculation depends on first choosing a value for the Okun's Law coefficient, and nowhere did he say what he thinks it would be. He just picked an "optimistic" value for the sake of demonstration. This single ambiguity easily gives him a few hundred billion dollars in wiggle room.
  - 14y ago

skylan_q 14y ago

I can give him a break on predictions, as no one can be good at predictions on this sort of thing. Just lucky. What really bothers me is what he advocates... To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble. Judging by Mr. Greenspan's remarkably cheerful recent testimony, he still thinks he can pull that off. But the Fed chairman's crystal ball has been cloudy lately; remember how he urged Congress to cut taxes to head off the risk of excessive budget surpluses? And a sober look at recent data is not encouraging. -Paul Krugman, 2002 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip...

guylhem 14y ago
Sometime you get what you pray for :-/ Krugman wanted the housing bubble, he got it. Please tell me, has he asked for any education bubble? I'm not really following what he says unless it's too wonky (like he last piece about Adam Smith hating bitcoin, because you know Adam Smith could have predicted bitcoin and peer to peer and computers http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/adam-smith-hates-bitcoin/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/adam-smith-hates...)
- skylan_q 14y ago
  Haven't seen him say anything about helping fund the education bubble. But then again, he believes all sorts of silly things. Like if you print money and pay people to dig and bury holes over and over again, you can revive an economy.
  - nhaehnle 14y ago
    Like if you print money and pay people to dig and bury holes over and over again, you can revive an economy. It is pretty obvious that the economy can be in a state where doing this will revive the economy - because of the indirect positive effect on aggregate demand. Is is also pretty obvious that there will always be better ways to revive an economy - such as by paying people to do something that is considered to be useful. Then you get both the indirect positive effect on aggregate demand and you're directly getting something useful done (whether it's fixing the infrastructure, cleaning up rivers, taking care of the elderly, or painting pretty pictures really doesn't matter that much). Keynes actually implied all this in the often quote that Keynes-haters like to bring up again and again without properly understanding it.

zimpenfish 14y ago

You can swap "often wrong" for "economist".