Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Different Economics Texts for Different Economic Views

Alan Blinder and I are frequently on different sides of economic debates, especially when it comes to the effects of monetary and fiscal policy and the impact of short-term discretionary actions. For example, we have both testified together in Congress about the recent stimulus packages. He says they worked. I say they didn’t.

We also both have introductory economics textbooks which we have just revised in different ways in light of the experience with the recent financial crisis, the great recession, the policy response, and the slow recovery. In fact we have the same publisher who recently asked us to explain the rationale for the revisions, and then made videos of the answers. Here is Alan’s video and here is my video. It is not surprising that our approaches to the revisions are somewhat different, but perhaps not as much different as one would expect given the big differences in our views.

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