How Did Paul Krugman Get It So Wrong? John Cochrane
02 Oct 2018 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, business cycles, entrepreneurship, Euro crisis, financial economics, fiscal policy, global financial crisis (GFC), great depression, great recession, macroeconomics, monetary economics Tags: Paul Krugman
All is lost for solar and wind when @PaulKrugman concedes this much
26 Apr 2018 1 Comment
in energy economics, environmental economics Tags: Paul Krugman, solar power, wind power
From Earth, Wind and Liars https://nyti.ms/2JQcoyL
What undergrads and @stevenljoyce need to know about trade @GreenCatherine
12 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, development economics, international economics, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - New Zealand Tags: antiforeign bias, free trade, makework bias, Paul Krugman, protectionism, tariffs, trade policy
Minister for everything Stephen Joyce wrote some nonsense in the paper today about how trade agreements and more exports will mean more jobs:
I would like to make the point that trade access is hugely important for a small country like New Zealand.
Without fair and equal trade access we can’t sell as much of our goods and we get less for them. And that means fewer jobs.
This make-work bias is as bad as those who oppose trade agreements on the grounds of an anti-foreign bias. Trade affects the composition of employment, not the number of jobs. Paul Krugman spent a good part of the 1990s trying to explain that to the general public and public intellectuals.
The 1st @Paul Krugman (1994) on “Competitiveness: A Dangerous Obsession”
24 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in international economics, politics - USA Tags: anti-foreign buyers, anti-market buyers, Leftover Left, Paul Krugman, public intellectuals, rational ignorance, rational irrationality, renegade Left
More on honest @BernieSanders and his voodoo economics
24 Feb 2016 Leave a comment
in economic growth, economic history, macroeconomics, politics - USA Tags: 2016 presidential election, grates, left-wing populists, Paul Krugman, quackery, rational irrationality
The 1st @NYTimeskrugman on #TPPANoWay @Oxfamnz #JaneKelsey
30 Jan 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, development economics, economic history, growth disasters, growth miracles, international economics Tags: customs unions, free trade agreements, globalisation, Jane Kelsey, Leftover Left, Oxfam, Paul Krugman, preferential trading agreements, rational irrationality, TPP, Twitter left, Yes Minister
https://twitter.com/TPPMediaMarch/status/692055631579185152
If George Bush had not won the 2000 presidential election, Paul Krugman would have taken over as the best communicator of economics since Milton Friedman. Instead, he became patient number no.1 of George Bush derangement syndrome. Ann Coulter was patient no. 1 of Clintons derangement syndrome.
Source: Enemies of the WTO.
@NYTimeskrugman made worst technology prediction of all time
01 Jan 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of media and culture, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation Tags: creative destruction, Paul Krugman
Milton Friedman and Paul Krugman as inflation forecasters
03 Nov 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, macroeconomics, monetarism, monetary economics Tags: forecasting errors, Paul Krugman, public intellectuals
The first Paul Krugman (1997) on what trade negotiators negotiate about
29 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, international economics, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: customs unions, free trade agreements, free trade zones, game theory, Paul Krugman, preferential trading agreements, regional trade agreements, WTO
From wisdom to conviction – Paul Krugman on the Card–Kruger study of minimum wages (1998 and now)
18 Jul 2015 1 Comment
in economics of regulation, history of economic thought, labour economics, minimum wage, politics - USA, poverty and inequality Tags: evidence-based policy, living wage, Paul Krugman
This first screenshot is from the New York Times today of Paul Krugman’s current recollection of his interpretation of the Card – Kruger study of minimum wages in restaurants when that study was published all those years ago.
Paul Krugman in his review of Living Wage: What It Is and Why We Need It By Robert Pollin and Stephanie Luce in 1998 was far wiser.
So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: The higher wage reduces the quantity of labour demanded, and hence leads to unemployment. This theoretical prediction has, however, been hard to confirm with actual data.
Indeed, much-cited studies by two well-regarded labour economists, David Card and Alan Krueger, find that where there have been more or less controlled experiments, for example when New Jersey raised minimum wages but Pennsylvania did not, the effects of the increase on employment have been negligible or even positive.
Exactly what to make of this result is a source of great dispute. Card and Krueger offered some complex theoretical rationales, but most of their colleagues are unconvinced; the centrist view is probably that minimum wages “do,” in fact, reduce employment, but that the effects are small and swamped by other forces.
What is remarkable, however, is how this rather iffy result has been seized upon by some liberals as a rationale for making large minimum wage increases a core component of the liberal agenda–for arguing that living wages “can play an important role in reversing the 25-year decline in wages experienced by most working people in America” (as this book’s back cover has it).
Clearly these advocates very much want to believe that the price of labour–unlike that of gasoline, or Manhattan apartments–can be set based on considerations of justice, not supply and demand, without unpleasant side effects.
This will to believe is obvious in this book: The authors not only take the Card-Krueger results as gospel, but advance a number of other arguments that just do not hold up under examination.
The Card– Kruger results have gone from rather iffy in the mind of Paul Krugman to the basis of public policy that, if wrong, costs a lot of low paid workers their jobs. Krugman was well aware in 1998 what a risky path minimum wage increases were:
Now to me, at least, the obvious question is, why take this route? Why increase the cost of labour to employers so sharply, which–Card/Krueger notwithstanding–must pose a significant risk of pricing some workers out of the market, in order to give those workers so little extra income?
Why not give them the money directly, say, via an increase in the tax credit?
Studies of tiny increases in the minimum wage are being used to justify far larger increases in the minimum wage. Krugman was right to be suspect of that in 1998.
Venn Diagram: 1998 Paul Krugman v. 2015 Paul Krugman on the Minimum Wage tinyurl.com/q58ftug @WilliamOccam2 http://t.co/c4DdxqTvwK—
Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) July 18, 2015
Krugman’s statements today in the New York Times about the low starting point in modern America for any minimum wage increases is still keeping that slightly cautious tone in his analysis. Few who read his analysis will carry that passing nuance into their own policy advocacy.
Paul Krugman in 1998 was quite astute as to why people want to believe the minimum wage can be increased without any cost to jobs:
One answer is political: What a shift from income supports to living wage legislation does is to move the costs of income redistribution off-budget. And this may be a smart move if you believe that America should do more for its working poor, but that if it comes down to spending money on-budget it won’t.
Indeed, this is a popular view among economists who favour national minimum-wage increases: They will admit to their colleagues that such increases are not the best way to help the poor, but argue that it is the only politically feasible option.
Nor in 1998 was Krugman blind to the expressive politics, the ideological blindness of those who advocate minimum wage increases and living wages:
But I suspect there is another, deeper issue here–namely, that even without political constraints, advocates of a living wage would not be satisfied with any plan that relies on after-market redistribution.
They don’t want people to “have” a decent income, they want them to “earn” it, not be dependent on demeaning hand-outs…
In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or even economics, but morality. Its advocates are basically opposed to the idea that wages are a market price–determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of apples or coal.
It is most unwise to say there is no evidence of minimum wage increases causing unemployment. That sets a low bar of having to find only one or two studies to refute the claim:
1. Taking his claims as true, why do small businesses lobby against raising the minimum wage?
2. Why did Tom Holmes find in his seminal 1999 JPE paper that manufacturing clusters on the Right to Work Side of state borders and avoids the union side of the border?
3. Why did Erin Mansur and I find the same result in our 2013 paper where we build on Holmes’ paper and show that labour intensive manufacturing industries are even more likely to avoid the union side of the border as they are more likely to locate in the adjacent county in the Right to Work State?
4. The Card-Krueger study is certainly important but the variation they used to estimate their effect is tiny relative to the upcoming doubling of the minimum wage up to $15 in cities such as LA and San Fran. How is Dr. Krugman so sure that he can “extrapolate out of sample” to a policy that has never been tried before? Does he have a valid structural model that he can use to conduct such extreme policy counter-factuals?
Karl Popper would be proud of Krugman’s bold and risky prediction that strictly forbids the existence of any studies showing adverse unemployment effects of minimum wage increases.
The thing to remember is, if there is not doubt in the literature, if there are not some mixed results, the econometricians are simply not trying hard enough to win tenure, secure promotion and be published on the top journals.
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