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Paul Krugman on How did Economists get it so wrong ?

25 points by anirudh 17y ago

jeremymims 17y ago
Paul Krugman continues to write the best articles about the state of the economy for laymen. I'm continually impressed (despite his years of research, training, and a nobel prize to boot) with his ability to explain what is happening and why. Sometimes I lament the fact that instead of running the show, he's left to opine about the policies of others.
- kingkongrevenge 17y ago
  He seems kinda clueless to me. A whole article on the economic theory of recessions with no mention of malinvestment? He goes on at length about the efficient market hypothesis and bubbles yet never acknowledges that nobody can identify a bubble that has happened without government manipulation of the market. He goes on at length about Keynesian stimulus with no mention of its dismal failures, most notably in Japan. There are always these rather ridiculous omissions and oversimplifications with krugman.
  - olefoo 17y ago
    You have to consider that in this case he is writing for a general audience. You also have to consider that he is writing in an environment where he has to distinguish himself from Chicago school absolutists. Also, I think your assertion that asset bubbles do not occur absent government interference is wrong; or at the very least leaves out the fact that often it is the speculators themselves who are most demanding that the government aid and assist the inflation of the bubble.
    - anamax 17y ago
      > the fact that often it is the speculators themselves who are most demanding that the government aid and assist the inflation of the bubble. "He asked me to do {something stupid}" does not relieve you of the responsibility for the dumb things that you do. More to the point, the "govt should fix things" belief leads to govt doing dumb things. These things never look dumb up front.
  - TomOfTTB 17y ago
    Krugman is a guy who preaches to the choir while ignoring anyone who might challenge him. Which is why he gets away with such omissions. Take this paragraph... "During the golden years, financial economists came to believe that markets were inherently stable — indeed, that stocks and other assets were always priced just right. There was nothing in the prevailing models suggesting the possibility of the kind of collapse that happened last year. " That's a straw man if ever there was one. I don't think any economist has ever denied the reality of market corrections. In fact, while Krugman picks out a few choice quotes the fact is many, many economists have been warning about the housing bubble for years. He does eventually address this with one sentence on page 5 but then obscures the issue by quoting politicians denying the bubble (a politician is never going to predict doom and gloom even if they do see it coming) In the end there were mistakes made in our economy but Krugman's using those mistakes to float a theory that the whole system is flawed even though the system created 26 years of relative prosperity. Just because deregulation went a little too far doesn't mean going in the complete opposite direction is wise.
    - kingkongrevenge 17y ago
      Yeah, the main point of the efficient market hypothesis is that high alpha (CAPM) is very, very hard to achieve, not that markets are steady and only react to new information.
  - larryfreeman 17y ago
    I think that someone can have a meaningful discussion on recessions without mentioning the "dismal failures" of the Keynsians. For the record, there are plenty of bubbles that have not been caused by government manipulation. For example, the Tulip bubble that happened in the Netherlands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulipmania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulipmania) (not to mention bubbles caused by people like Madoff and other con men). Also be careful. The government is always involved with any economic crisis and you can always blame a government action for making a bubble worse. If you believe that without a doubt the government is the cause of all bubbles, then no one will ever "prove" you wrong. If you are open minded and use the simplest explanation for a given set of facts (i.e., Occam's Razor), then you will find that not all bubbles have happened because of government manipulation.
    - kiba 17y ago
      Some people still say that the tulipmania is government's fault. http://mises.org/story/2564 http://mises.org/story/2564 The story of Tulipmania is not only about tulips and their price movements, and certainly studying the "fundamentals of the tulip market" does not explain the occurrence of this speculative bubble. The price of tulips only served as a manifestation of the end result of a government policy that expanded the quantity of money and thus fostered an environment for speculation and malinvestment. This scenario has been played out over and over throughout history.
      - larryfreeman 17y ago
        Thanks for the link. Interesting analysis. Still, I think it proves my point that you can always blame the government if you want to. In my view, the reasoning has one major flaw. If money supply was the cause, then why weren't there other bubbles in addition to tulipmania? If you correctly identify the cause, then it should be both sufficient and necessary for the result. If the cause was the Dutch monetary policy, then there should have been other bubbles contemporary with the monetary policy. As far as I understand it, the tulipmania did not cause a recession or depression even if some very rich people lost all their money. If the author's reasoning was correct, then there should have been other bubbles caused by the same government policy.
  - hristov 17y ago
    "yet never acknowledges that nobody can identify a bubble that has happened without government manipulation of the market" Well, let me identify some for you. The tulip bubble, which is the classical example of a bubble had absolutely nothing to do with government manipulation. The internet stocks bubble of the late 90s also was largely unrelated to government manipulation. The housing bubbles of some eastern european countries also had nothing to do with the government as those governments did not subsidise housing. Even with the US housing bubble government involvement was rather tangential, the most troubled assets were not in any way subsidized by the government. " He goes on at length about Keynesian stimulus with no mention of its dismal failures, most notably in Japan." Japan is not an example of failure of Keynesian economics, because it is not really an example of keneysian economics. There haven't been the large public works project perscribed by keneysian economics in japan. Japan has tried to get out of the recession mostly by secretly subsidizing its banks.
    - kingkongrevenge 17y ago
      > There haven't been the large public works project perscribed by keneysian economics in japan. At one point Japan was the single largest concrete importer in the world. They were building roads and bridges and train lines like crazy. It temporarily juiced the markets but did nothing to sustainably restart the economy. Japan didn't so much subsidize the zombie banks as simply allow them to float along insolvent forever. They never forced bankruptcy or write-downs. > The internet stocks bubble of the late 90s also was largely unrelated to government manipulation. The NASDAQ went parabolic in 1999 just after Greenspan cut interest rates as a precautionary measure to juice the economy in preparation for Y2K. Tulips are addressed elsewhere. I don't know anything about Eastern European housing, but I'll bet its riddled with subsidies and tax advantages just like it is here.
- kiba 17y ago
  Nobel prizes do not mean anything when polar opposite in economics thought have also won prizes, ie. Hayek.
  - deleted 17y ago
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  - deleted 17y ago
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  - jfornear 17y ago
    Krugman won the Nobel prize for his work in international trade theory, and I don't think his ideas were incompatible with Austrian thought. I align with Austrians most of the time and I don't remember having any objections to his trade theory when I studied it a while ago. Nonetheless, I do think Krugman has been venturing a little far from his expertise lately.
    - bokonist 17y ago
      What about his trade theory was both novel and true (honest question, one I've asked before and that no one has answered http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=669831 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=669831)?
chasingsparks 17y ago
I just ordered Krugman's book, so this is a premature hypothesis but: I think Krugman says things he knows to be false but thinks are worth saying in order to pull the median voter towards his line of thinking. His NYT editorials are not only written for a general audience, but are written at such a simplified level that they are absurd. However, they are instantly touted across the blogosphere by self-styled progressives. His Nobel is a big stick to carry -- I think he is using it in a utilitarian (from his perspective) way.
- jhancock 17y ago
  If economists ever expect us to view them even remotely in the same league as scientists, they may want to start by dropping the approach of trying to "persuade" and move on towards "proof". Krugman's not bad, he writes good mainstream stuff, which is hard to do. I would be far more impressed if he had spent the last 5 to 10 years writing to the mainstream, screaming his head off about the dangers of the bubble we were in. And if his answer is that he wasn't certain is was a dangerous bubble, he can hand over his Nobel to me, because I sure as hell knew.
mynameishere 17y ago
In late nineteenth century, the term "political economy" was generally replaced by the term economics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy Economics isn't a science. Physicists can agree on 99.99 percent of what they talk about, and the other .01 percent is agreed to be unknown or arguable. Economists can barely, just barely, hold a tenuous consensus on things like comparative advantage. The reason economists "get it wrong", is: 1. They want to direct the money into XYZ set of pockets instead of ABC set of pockets, thus they're always "wrong" as for as ABC is concerned, and 2. They don't have the predictive consistency typical of scientists because...they aren't scientists.
- ojbyrne 17y ago
  Having done some actual studying in the social sciences, I agree with "isn't a science." There's a lot of smart people working to make those quasi-sciences into actual sciences, but they repeatedly run up against the basic obstacle that you can't ethically do scientific experiments on humans, except in rare circumstances. That does not mean that the social sciences are unimportant. In fact the amount of money (which you alluded to) means they are actually perceived as important. Once upon a time physics wasn't a science either.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  Physicists working on something close to relativity, mechanics, E&M or QM (not including foundations of QM) can agree on 99% of what they talk about. Systems biologists can't, nor can climate scientists, oceanographers, ecologists, geophysicists or astronomers. A few fields (namely the ones taught to physics majors) have a simple unified theory that every sane person can agree to. The rest are messy, much like economics.
  - roundsquare 17y ago
    > Systems biologists can't, nor can climate scientists, oceanographers, ecologists, geophysicists or astronomers. Notably, all fields where you can't do controlled experiments.
- 17y ago
known 17y ago
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. --Reagon

25 points by anirudh 17y ago

Paul Krugman continues to write the best articles about the state of the economy for laymen. I'm continually impressed (despite his years of research, training, and a nobel prize to boot) with his ability to explain what is happening and why. Sometimes I lament the fact that instead of running the show, he's left to opine about the policies of others.

kingkongrevenge 17y ago
He seems kinda clueless to me. A whole article on the economic theory of recessions with no mention of malinvestment? He goes on at length about the efficient market hypothesis and bubbles yet never acknowledges that nobody can identify a bubble that has happened without government manipulation of the market. He goes on at length about Keynesian stimulus with no mention of its dismal failures, most notably in Japan. There are always these rather ridiculous omissions and oversimplifications with krugman.
- olefoo 17y ago
  You have to consider that in this case he is writing for a general audience. You also have to consider that he is writing in an environment where he has to distinguish himself from Chicago school absolutists. Also, I think your assertion that asset bubbles do not occur absent government interference is wrong; or at the very least leaves out the fact that often it is the speculators themselves who are most demanding that the government aid and assist the inflation of the bubble.
  - anamax 17y ago
    > the fact that often it is the speculators themselves who are most demanding that the government aid and assist the inflation of the bubble. "He asked me to do {something stupid}" does not relieve you of the responsibility for the dumb things that you do. More to the point, the "govt should fix things" belief leads to govt doing dumb things. These things never look dumb up front.
- TomOfTTB 17y ago
  Krugman is a guy who preaches to the choir while ignoring anyone who might challenge him. Which is why he gets away with such omissions. Take this paragraph... "During the golden years, financial economists came to believe that markets were inherently stable — indeed, that stocks and other assets were always priced just right. There was nothing in the prevailing models suggesting the possibility of the kind of collapse that happened last year. " That's a straw man if ever there was one. I don't think any economist has ever denied the reality of market corrections. In fact, while Krugman picks out a few choice quotes the fact is many, many economists have been warning about the housing bubble for years. He does eventually address this with one sentence on page 5 but then obscures the issue by quoting politicians denying the bubble (a politician is never going to predict doom and gloom even if they do see it coming) In the end there were mistakes made in our economy but Krugman's using those mistakes to float a theory that the whole system is flawed even though the system created 26 years of relative prosperity. Just because deregulation went a little too far doesn't mean going in the complete opposite direction is wise.
  - kingkongrevenge 17y ago
    Yeah, the main point of the efficient market hypothesis is that high alpha (CAPM) is very, very hard to achieve, not that markets are steady and only react to new information.
- larryfreeman 17y ago
  I think that someone can have a meaningful discussion on recessions without mentioning the "dismal failures" of the Keynsians. For the record, there are plenty of bubbles that have not been caused by government manipulation. For example, the Tulip bubble that happened in the Netherlands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulipmania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulipmania) (not to mention bubbles caused by people like Madoff and other con men). Also be careful. The government is always involved with any economic crisis and you can always blame a government action for making a bubble worse. If you believe that without a doubt the government is the cause of all bubbles, then no one will ever "prove" you wrong. If you are open minded and use the simplest explanation for a given set of facts (i.e., Occam's Razor), then you will find that not all bubbles have happened because of government manipulation.
  - kiba 17y ago
    Some people still say that the tulipmania is government's fault. http://mises.org/story/2564 http://mises.org/story/2564 The story of Tulipmania is not only about tulips and their price movements, and certainly studying the "fundamentals of the tulip market" does not explain the occurrence of this speculative bubble. The price of tulips only served as a manifestation of the end result of a government policy that expanded the quantity of money and thus fostered an environment for speculation and malinvestment. This scenario has been played out over and over throughout history.
    - larryfreeman 17y ago
      Thanks for the link. Interesting analysis. Still, I think it proves my point that you can always blame the government if you want to. In my view, the reasoning has one major flaw. If money supply was the cause, then why weren't there other bubbles in addition to tulipmania? If you correctly identify the cause, then it should be both sufficient and necessary for the result. If the cause was the Dutch monetary policy, then there should have been other bubbles contemporary with the monetary policy. As far as I understand it, the tulipmania did not cause a recession or depression even if some very rich people lost all their money. If the author's reasoning was correct, then there should have been other bubbles caused by the same government policy.
- hristov 17y ago
  "yet never acknowledges that nobody can identify a bubble that has happened without government manipulation of the market" Well, let me identify some for you. The tulip bubble, which is the classical example of a bubble had absolutely nothing to do with government manipulation. The internet stocks bubble of the late 90s also was largely unrelated to government manipulation. The housing bubbles of some eastern european countries also had nothing to do with the government as those governments did not subsidise housing. Even with the US housing bubble government involvement was rather tangential, the most troubled assets were not in any way subsidized by the government. " He goes on at length about Keynesian stimulus with no mention of its dismal failures, most notably in Japan." Japan is not an example of failure of Keynesian economics, because it is not really an example of keneysian economics. There haven't been the large public works project perscribed by keneysian economics in japan. Japan has tried to get out of the recession mostly by secretly subsidizing its banks.
  - kingkongrevenge 17y ago
    > There haven't been the large public works project perscribed by keneysian economics in japan. At one point Japan was the single largest concrete importer in the world. They were building roads and bridges and train lines like crazy. It temporarily juiced the markets but did nothing to sustainably restart the economy. Japan didn't so much subsidize the zombie banks as simply allow them to float along insolvent forever. They never forced bankruptcy or write-downs. > The internet stocks bubble of the late 90s also was largely unrelated to government manipulation. The NASDAQ went parabolic in 1999 just after Greenspan cut interest rates as a precautionary measure to juice the economy in preparation for Y2K. Tulips are addressed elsewhere. I don't know anything about Eastern European housing, but I'll bet its riddled with subsidies and tax advantages just like it is here.
kiba 17y ago
Nobel prizes do not mean anything when polar opposite in economics thought have also won prizes, ie. Hayek.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- jfornear 17y ago
  Krugman won the Nobel prize for his work in international trade theory, and I don't think his ideas were incompatible with Austrian thought. I align with Austrians most of the time and I don't remember having any objections to his trade theory when I studied it a while ago. Nonetheless, I do think Krugman has been venturing a little far from his expertise lately.
  - bokonist 17y ago
    What about his trade theory was both novel and true (honest question, one I've asked before and that no one has answered http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=669831 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=669831)?

chasingsparks 17y ago

I just ordered Krugman's book, so this is a premature hypothesis but: I think Krugman says things he knows to be false but thinks are worth saying in order to pull the median voter towards his line of thinking. His NYT editorials are not only written for a general audience, but are written at such a simplified level that they are absurd. However, they are instantly touted across the blogosphere by self-styled progressives. His Nobel is a big stick to carry -- I think he is using it in a utilitarian (from his perspective) way.

jhancock 17y ago
If economists ever expect us to view them even remotely in the same league as scientists, they may want to start by dropping the approach of trying to "persuade" and move on towards "proof". Krugman's not bad, he writes good mainstream stuff, which is hard to do. I would be far more impressed if he had spent the last 5 to 10 years writing to the mainstream, screaming his head off about the dangers of the bubble we were in. And if his answer is that he wasn't certain is was a dangerous bubble, he can hand over his Nobel to me, because I sure as hell knew.

mynameishere 17y ago

In late nineteenth century, the term "political economy" was generally replaced by the term economics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy Economics isn't a science. Physicists can agree on 99.99 percent of what they talk about, and the other .01 percent is agreed to be unknown or arguable. Economists can barely, just barely, hold a tenuous consensus on things like comparative advantage. The reason economists "get it wrong", is: 1. They want to direct the money into XYZ set of pockets instead of ABC set of pockets, thus they're always "wrong" as for as ABC is concerned, and 2. They don't have the predictive consistency typical of scientists because...they aren't scientists.

ojbyrne 17y ago
Having done some actual studying in the social sciences, I agree with "isn't a science." There's a lot of smart people working to make those quasi-sciences into actual sciences, but they repeatedly run up against the basic obstacle that you can't ethically do scientific experiments on humans, except in rare circumstances. That does not mean that the social sciences are unimportant. In fact the amount of money (which you alluded to) means they are actually perceived as important. Once upon a time physics wasn't a science either.
yummyfajitas 17y ago
Physicists working on something close to relativity, mechanics, E&M or QM (not including foundations of QM) can agree on 99% of what they talk about. Systems biologists can't, nor can climate scientists, oceanographers, ecologists, geophysicists or astronomers. A few fields (namely the ones taught to physics majors) have a simple unified theory that every sane person can agree to. The rest are messy, much like economics.
- roundsquare 17y ago
  > Systems biologists can't, nor can climate scientists, oceanographers, ecologists, geophysicists or astronomers. Notably, all fields where you can't do controlled experiments.
17y ago

known 17y ago

If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. --Reagon