Scholarly Comments on Academic Economics

Volume 14, Issue 2, May 2017

In this issue (.pdf):

A king cursed: Kenneth Rogoff’s The Curse of Cash is assayed by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, and Rogoff responds.

Stationarity problem: Brendan Beare criticizes a Journal of Econometrics article purporting to model a time series of densities as a nonstationary cointegrated process.

Music piracy coda: Stan Liebowitz replies to Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf.

Got entrepreneurship yet?: Dan Johansson and Arvid Malm search textbooks and assigned readings at top Econ Ph.D. programs.

New entries extend the Classical Liberalism in Econ, by Country series to 15 articles:

My Most Regretted Statements, a symposium, contains these contributions:

  • Monique Bégin tells of a statement she often repeated in her time as Canada’s Minister of National Health & Welfare: “Canada is the Sweden of the Americas.”
  • Michael Boskin reflects on his time as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and the hazards of misattribution, of not controlling op-ed titles, and of equations going missing.
  • Tyler Cowen reflects on his circa 2007 underestimation of the likelihood of a major financial crisis.
  • Jon Elster draws from his work on defective belief formation, illustrating with his own past errors, including about the electorate binding itself and about thinking of anti-communists “as a clock that is always one hour late rather than as a broken clock that shows the right time twice a day.”
  • Richard Epstein tells of his conversion to consequentialism.
  • Sam Peltzman relates his hardy forecast in 1988 of Michael Dukakis’s impending victory over George H. W. Bush.
  • Cass Sunstein begins: “I have said a lot of things that I regret.” And he ends: “A main job of academics is to float ideas and take risks, and if they do not make mistakes, or learn enough to change their minds, well, that’s really something to regret.”

Access the symposium here.

EJW Audio

Hannes Gissurarson on Liberalism in Iceland

Daniel Schwekendiek on Korea’s Incentived Exports

Call for papers

EJW fosters open exchange. We welcome proposals and submissions of diverse viewpoints. EJW also welcomes ‘journal watch’ submissions beyond Econ.

Download entire May 2017 issue (.pdf)

Table of contents (.pdf) with links to articles