As reiterated by this NYT article by Robert Pollin and Michael Ash, the main debate that animates commentators is the relationship between national debt and GDP growth. This discourse has arisen from an error that on an Excel sheet during the publication of the paper under reference in the article. My view is that the paper looked a bit too neat in determining the threshold at which debt begins to constrain further growth and provided ammunition to ideologues to justify sharp reductions in debt and to counter-punch against those economists who considered a Keynesian approach as a solution.
To my mind, this state of affairs reflects the state of affairs in academia today and more particularly in economics. To be clear, the discipline of economics integrates quantitative tools impressively and provides meaning to phenomenon that would not be tractable. However, that supremely capable economists made this error and that the paper was then taken as a holy grail in the effect of the nexus between debt and economic growth is cause to pause and contemplate. This is because while the quantitative tools are sufficiently developed, it is worrying that it took a couple of years for the error to be discovered and for an explanation to issue. This merely highlights my concern that too much of economic reasoning is suspended whenever a paper is issued that claims to find a connection that answers a topical policy issue.
To my mind, the lesson is that all professionals economists must be as suspicious as they are impressed with the tools that they deploy. The whole profession suffers when errors are that easily missed and that verification is not performed before the studies are given prominence.
To my mind, this state of affairs reflects the state of affairs in academia today and more particularly in economics. To be clear, the discipline of economics integrates quantitative tools impressively and provides meaning to phenomenon that would not be tractable. However, that supremely capable economists made this error and that the paper was then taken as a holy grail in the effect of the nexus between debt and economic growth is cause to pause and contemplate. This is because while the quantitative tools are sufficiently developed, it is worrying that it took a couple of years for the error to be discovered and for an explanation to issue. This merely highlights my concern that too much of economic reasoning is suspended whenever a paper is issued that claims to find a connection that answers a topical policy issue.
To my mind, the lesson is that all professionals economists must be as suspicious as they are impressed with the tools that they deploy. The whole profession suffers when errors are that easily missed and that verification is not performed before the studies are given prominence.
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