The gloves are definitely coming off. This piece by Chicago economist John Cochrane and another by Chicago’s Eugene Fama get under the skin of Brad DeLong and lead Paul Krugman to denounce Cochrane and Fama as barbarians.
Economics Cage Match: DeLong/Krugman vs. Cochrane/Fama
TAGS: economists, Paul Krugman
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Note to Krugman: when you are astounded that otherwise intelligent people can’t see something obvious, you might want to consider that maybe it’s you who can’t see the obvious. For example, recall the “oil non-bubble”.
It’s interesting to see that esteemed Professors can be just as childish as the 5-year-old next door.
And if Krugman and DeLong didn’t make their replies steeped with such arrogance and condesencion, people might find them more palatable and less juvenile.
Go Chicago!
Not that I am qualified but I think Krugman is much more convincing then Fama and Cochrane. He makes a lot more sense.
I can’t help but wonder what the monetary impacts are to the market value of a Booth MBA?
I’ll always wonder how that Nobel medal fit around Krugman’s enormously inflated head. For a guy so adamantly opposed to Bush, Krugman uses the exact same methods to attack his opponents, branding them as idiots who don’t understand.
An incontrovertible sign that the cable news ethic of “debate” has infected some of our finest minds.
On the up side, the public’s getting more exposure to the internal debates of the profession than ever before. But that’s double-edged: It might get more lay people (like me) interested to pick up a few books and see what all the fuss is about. It also might make lay people dismiss economics because it seems to them an unsettled science — which they might take to mean (mistakenly) that it’s all just opinion.
In any event, I wish all sides were more gracious. Especially Krugman — I can understand the passion of his conviction, but you’d think that as a Nobel winner and high-profile writer he could afford to be more measured and less dismissive. Because Krugman is the most well-known to non-economists, I’d say the onus is on him to set a civil tone.
I love the back-and-forth between a) Krugman and Mankiw, and b)Delong/Krugman vs. people Mankiw quotes. I side with Krugman’s ideas, but I don’t like his abrasive and dogmatic style.