Can We Call Him a Denier?

All Hail Professor Mankiw! He links to an AP report claiming "Only one outside economist contacted by Obama aides, Harvard's Greg Mankiw, who served on President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, voiced skepticism about the need for an economic stimulus, transition officials said."

Clearly the Economics is settled and Mankiw is just some flat-earther from the Bush administration! They probably just asked the old man to be nice. Mankiw points out:

Skepticism, rather than unequivocal opposition, is the right word. When contacted, I said the same things I have been saying on this blog: that monetary policy is not out of ammunition, and that tax cuts are potentially more potent than spending increases. I could have added that a spending-based stimulus to address the current short-term crisis might lead to a long-term increase in the size of government, but I doubted that concern would sway Team Obama. In general, I think economists need a large dose of humility when evaluating alternative proposals to deal with the current downturn, as there is still a lot we do not understand.

I am sure I am not the only person in the economics profession skeptical of spending increases to stimulate the economy. See, for example, GMU economist Tyler Cowen. If the new administration wanted to find more skeptics of stimulus spending among professional economists, I could have come up with some possible candidates for them, but the Obama economists probably already know who those likely skeptics would be.

Nixon was wrong. We're not all Keynesians now. He should have said "We're all Keynesians except for N. Gregory Mankiw." Thank all that is good and decent in the world that there is one.

Economics and Markets Posted by John Kranz at December 19, 2008 3:34 PM