Before we get to the roundup, here’s the latest chapter in the ongoing intellectual suicide of Paul Krugman:
- Economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff write a scholarly paper purporting to show that high levels of government debt lead to slow economic growth. For the record, I have not read this paper.
- Krugman, while praising the authors’ previous work, asserts that this time, there’s no there there. Specifically, he says that most of the Reinhart-Rogoff evidence comes from four episodes. According to Krugman, none of these four episodes counts. One could certainly well imagine a reasoned argument along these lines.
- Krugman’s, however, is not that reasoned argument. Here is how he dismisses the episode labeled “Canada in the 90s”:
advocates of austerity have been using Canada in the mid-90s as an example of a success story; surely they can’t have it both ways.
The problem, of course, is that there is no “they” who are trying to have it both ways. Reinhart and Rogoff have made an argument about Canada in the 90’s. That argument stands or falls on its own. It is no refutation to observe that somebody else might have made some other (correct or incorrect) argument about Canada in the 90’s.
The fallacy here is to lump together all of the people with whom Krugman disagrees on matters of policy, assume they all agree on matters of theory, and hold them responsible for each others’ views, even to the point of accusing A of inconsistency because he disagrees with B. For the first time ever, I went ahead and left a comment on Krugman’s blog to this effect. But it’s exactly the same intellectual crime I’ve been objecting to here on The Big Questions for weeks.
Most recently, I objected this past Monday, which brings us to the beginning of our roundup. Tuesday, we talked about the ultimatum game, in which experimental results indicate that people are hesitant to steal money. I’m not sure what that tells us beyond what we already knew. Wednesday we had video from one of the most amazing plays in the history of baseball. And on Thursday and Friday, we had a quiz question and its solution to test your understanding of comparative advantage—one of the deepest and most fruitful insights in the history of economics.
I’ll be back on Monday.
I’d like to see a discussion between you and Krugman…a public debate or perhaps just a string of short (or not so short) op-eds, like your discussion with Jason Furman in the LA Times.
Krugman really tries to sell the pop-economics notion that “if we all just spend more money, we’ll all be better off.” Someone needs to publicly depants that idea, because it’s very widely believed.
I believe the ‘they’ he is referring to is economists who are advocating against the Keynes based economic program he supports, and want to reduce the deficit during a time of high unemployment with low interest rates.
Reinhert and Rogoff see the high debt ratios and the corresponding examples of poor growth as reasons to reign in spending.
Other economists who support the Canadian Austerity package of the 90’s as an example of ‘a success story’ to quote Krugman.
So, from his point of view, different groups/people advocating the same policy both claim Canada is an example of a success and a failure.
Admittedly, Reinhert and Rogoff are not doing both, but other groups who want THE EXACT SAME POLICY use Canada as a counter-factual…
Now, I am not as bright as either the two battling professors, and only have a Masters of Linguistics, but I follow both these two blogs pretty closely, and for a while Krugman has been battling against economists who are advocating the need to reign in spending now. He has been waging this struggle against many different people all advocating the same policy, sometimes (see above) using conflicting evidence.
It is my professional opinion as a linguist that Mr. Landsberg is only correct in his harsh critique of the use of the ‘they’ employed by Mr. Krugman if he ignores the long term discourse analysis/narrative employed by Mr. Krugman.
I don’t feel it is, a Mr. Landsburg states, a fallacy because he holds them accountable for conflicting views when they have different theories, rather the same data/evidence used in contrasting position (Canada is good AND bad) which somehow both can both be used of critiques of Mr. Krugman seems to have earned his ire.
“That argument stands or falls on its own. It is no refutation to observe that somebody else might have made some other (correct or incorrect) argument about Canada in the 90’s.”
Excellent. It’s sad that this type of clear debunking of sloppy reasoning isn’t more prevalent in society. Thanks.
I’m surprised you had a comment make it past the censors. I’ve made plenty of comments over at Krug’s blog and none of them make it past the commissars.
The irony here is that Krugman is using the “they can’t have it both ways” approach hurts his argument just as much as he thinks it hurts the austeritiests (Is that even a word?) He won’t acknowledge it though, his ego is too big to do that.
It’s not hard to see where Krugman is coming from, his blog is more political than anything economic.
Tony:
If Krugman wishes to engage in politics, then pointing out that some of his opponents are inconsistent is all very good. If he wishes to engage in economics and advocate a certain policy, then he needs to show that the opposing viewpoint is wrong. Not that some or even many of its advocates are inconsistent, but that the policy itself is mistaken. I leave it to others to decide whether Krugman choosing the first course and engaging in demagoguery is due to partisanship or due to laziness.
Having read Krugman’s post, here is an observation:
The credibility of an argument is inversely proportional to the frequency of its use of the word “surely”.
The “quiz question” link is pointing to the baseball video.
Of course, I do understand what you are saying, just as a linguist, ‘they’ is perfectly appropriate in this context, especially in terms of the narrative/discourse that has been previously established.
Vivi: Thanks. I’ll fix this now.
Krugman was only just pointing out that Reinhart and Rogoff’s claimed causal relationship between debt/GDP and growth past the magic 90% threshold is based on thin evidence — so few observations in fact that he could comment on each one individually in a relatively short blog post. Landsburg’s taking a pea shot rather than facing the main argument that you can’t and shouldn’t hang a theory on 4 data point observations.
Observer: Krugman was only just pointing out that Reinhart and Rogoff’s claimed causal relationship … is based on … so few observations in fact that he could comment on each one individually in a relatively short blog post.
One could equally well say that Krugman’s Nobel Prize is based on so few papers that it would be possible to comment on each one of them in a relatively short blog post:
Paper 1: Ha ha.
Paper 2: This is absurd.
Paper 3: This contradicts something Hubert Humphrey once said.
I do not think that a blog post along those lines would be a useful contribution to any discussion.
Dear Steve,
Thanks for your personalized reply. I’m not sure you’ve understood the context or the point. The context: R&R’s assert that, based on cross-country regression analysis, they find that when a country’s debt/GDP ratio crosses a threshold X, growth slows. Many people, including Rogoff, are citing that statistical analysis to make dire predictions about rising interest rates and calamitous losses of market confidence as the US approaches that threshold. Krugman’s simple point is tha in their regression analysis only four OECD observations ever crossed that threshold and he then very briefly goes through each case suggesting why they don’t hold up as very good examples (e.g. post WWII slowdown almost certainly due to mass demobilization and not to high debt).
Pretty basic points that any one with the most rudimentary of training in regression analysis could have made.
I’ve really enjoyed reading your books and other writings and I normally admire them for their sophisticated sense of humor. But I fail to grasp your analogy/attempt at humor on this issue. By most published quality-adjusted citation ranking systems (e.g. recursive impact rankings) Paul Krugman remains one of the most cited economists, and without a doubt so in the field of international trade. The ‘market’ of other well cited economists seems to rank him very highly. Hence his Nobel Prize seems to rest on considerably more solid empirical evidence than this particular cross-country regression claim of R&R. You may wish that that were different, but the datapoints are what they are.
Observer: Here is the exact point at which I disagree with you:
he then very briefly goes through each case suggesting why they don’t hold up as very good examples
The only argument that Krugman makes for Canada not being a good example is that somebody else might have used Canada as an example of something different.
This does not seem to me to be a good argument against Canada as an example.
Moreover, it seems to me that this argument fails in the same way that many of Krugman’s recent arguments fail: He points to someone who has made a silly argument against extending unemployment benefits, refutes that argument, and acts as if this suffices to dispense with *all* arguments. (I’ve given citations to this in previous blog posts.) Reinhart/Rogoff are no more responsible for what someone else might have said about Canada than the entire community of fiscal conservatives is responsible for some quote from Senator John Kyl.
Of course none of this detracts from Krugman’s real accomplishments. But sometimes accomplished people say silly things, and in my opinion, Krugman’s been saying a lot of them lately.
Let us suppose that I am given a statement of the form “A causes B”. I could ask (i) Are you sure you have the causality correct and that it is not B causing A? (ii) Are you sure that there is no third factor C causing both A and B? Very basic logic, and I need not know anything about the subject matter.
But to wave my hands, repeatedly invoke “Surely”, and thus conclude that the statement is incontrovertibly false: that, my friends, requires a Nobel-level intellect.
Steve, whilst you are correct that someone else using the same evidence for the exact opposite does not invalite it. It does suggest that the evidence is not exactly clear cut. Knowing nothing else about the evidence, it must weaken our faith in it to some extent. Person A says it shows a, person B says it shows b. a and b cannot both be correct. If we only knew what person A said, we may assign a probability of it being correct. Now we know that the opposite interpretation is at least possible, and not only possible but published somewhere, that probability must be reduced.
Harold: Knowing nothing else about the evidence, it must weaken our faith in it to some extent.
Agreed in general but not in this case, because in this case Person B is a group of people who Krugman has been telling us, on a daily basis for months, are liars, scumbags and charlatans.