Pop quiz-I promise it's an easy one. Which one is Stephen Williamson?
"Where I part ways with Krugman is mainly in his lack of respect for the majority of people who are actively engaged in macroeconomic research, and for some of the people who made key contributions to the profession in the last 40 years. That lack of respect is both uninformed and unnecessary."
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/12/noah-smith-chrnonicles-blow-to-prescott.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiaryOfARepublicanHater+%28Diary+of+a+Republican+Hater%29
"There’s something irksome about defending micro-founded macro from the attack that it is ‘without merit’. A voice inside me says: if they aren’t doing macro, by which I mean, generating new empirical or theoretical work themselves, who are they to go about proclaiming whether something has merit or not, or how macro should be done? [I'm not singling out Adam here. Lots are at it.] And why should anyone care what they say?
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/i-love-microfoundations-just-not-yours.html
Ok, I told you it would be easy-obviously Krugman gives the game away if you read him at all. However, the snark is very similar, the provincial condescension to the great Unwashed laypeople outside of it. This second comment is actually Tony Yates. This is all chronicled above on Noah Smith's post.
"Yates essentially recites the standard catechism: the Lucas Critique is really important, the '70s inflation proved it, SVaRs are a sort-of-acceptable alternative, New Keynesian models are OK except Calvo pricing is suspect, etc. etc. If you want to know how the average Freshwater-y DSGE-slinging macroeconomist thinks about his place in the cosmos, read Yates' post."
Noah adds that Yates catches himself a little bit:
"OK OK I'm being mean with selective quoting. Yates dutifully follows up with this quote: "[T]here’s the risk that we come to seem like a cult bent on disengaging, concerned to interact with those outside the cult only so far as is necessary to squeeze them for the money we need to continue playing with our toys.")
Yates decided to condescend to writing a very long reply to these hapless critics who have nothing published, probably never been to a peer review in their lives. In explaining the reason why despite the irksomeness of it all he still replied to these-absolutely know-nothing-critics he says something very interesting:
"Three concerns make it hard to resist attempting a defence, however. First, there is the concern that the macro project at large gets tarred with the same brush as the microfounders who insist almost religiously that prices are flexible and markets are efficient. So it’s worth trying to disentangle the defence of the project as a whole from defending those substantive positions. Second, there’s the concern that someone with some influence might take Adam or others who say these things seriously. Third, there’s the concern that if people inside macro don’t respond to challenge, no matter how high-handed and ill thought through, there’s the risk that we come to seem like a cult bent on disengaging, concerned to interact with those outside the cult only so far as is necessary to squeeze them for the money we need to continue playing with our toys. [Perhaps that day has already come?!]"
"In my time in central banks one definitely encountered a breed of policymaker that behaved as if they were above actually doing macro, but yet seemed to know all the answers for sure, and know how macro should be done [of course by someone else, not them]. It seemed to many of us who observed them as though they had fallen victim to the illusion that since they had done so well in life, their gut feelings about stuff must really be valuable, and that perhaps that’s where macroeconomic truth lay, in what they as great individuals felt and said. Many can tell stories of attempting to advise them, and being met with the condescending twinkle in the eye that translates as ‘Ah, so that’s what’s true in your silly little toy world, is it, tee hee, how quaint that you think such things worth repeating, well, I can only hope that one day you glimmer the real source of truth, namely, the instinctive knowledge of the chosen’. If the meme that microfounded macro has ‘no merit’ were to gain any more traction, I assert that great danger would lie ahead!: theorising that is incomplete and ‘accidental’ [in the sense meant by Krugman]; policy promises that are unverifiable; discretion untamable; and a search for new economic knowledge that is empty and futile (since the truth is already felt by the great policymakers, and the only way to divine it is to draw the few charts they ask us to plot, and sit around and wait until the charts work their inner magic and they are kind enough to write it down in speeches for us)."
http://longandvariable.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/why-microfoundations-have-merit/
I think that's great. I love this total contempt for these prima donnas that these poor academic economists have to deal with who actually thing their 'gut feelings' matter. Isn't this really at the crux to what the-let's just say it-insufferably pompous attitude that you get in talking from anyone from Scott Sumner, to Stephen Williamson, to Bob Yates? It's the idea that we laypeople, the GREAT UNWASHED don't even get to have an opinion until we have read the right textbook and probably taken a good shower as well.
There's real contempt for 'intuition', 'discretion, and 'gut feelings.' In economics presumably there are no gut feelings just properly microfounded models. The rest is pig latin. It makes me think of the time the Democrats had the DSGE people testify before Congress-Robert Solow was there. The basic viewpoint one DSGE-slinging economist had is no doubt the common view: if you have anything to say about economics, it should be able to be said in a DSGE model. If not, then your basically just making grimacing sounds or guttural grunts-you're not really speaking.
Yet, he gives the game away by admitting that these grunting prima donnas are actual policymakers who might just cancel their funding if they aren't able to restrain their contempt just a little bit. As Unlearning Econ pointed out recently, it's possible to have an economy without economists. Clearly Yates understands this.
"Where I part ways with Krugman is mainly in his lack of respect for the majority of people who are actively engaged in macroeconomic research, and for some of the people who made key contributions to the profession in the last 40 years. That lack of respect is both uninformed and unnecessary."
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/12/noah-smith-chrnonicles-blow-to-prescott.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiaryOfARepublicanHater+%28Diary+of+a+Republican+Hater%29
"There’s something irksome about defending micro-founded macro from the attack that it is ‘without merit’. A voice inside me says: if they aren’t doing macro, by which I mean, generating new empirical or theoretical work themselves, who are they to go about proclaiming whether something has merit or not, or how macro should be done? [I'm not singling out Adam here. Lots are at it.] And why should anyone care what they say?
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/i-love-microfoundations-just-not-yours.html
Ok, I told you it would be easy-obviously Krugman gives the game away if you read him at all. However, the snark is very similar, the provincial condescension to the great Unwashed laypeople outside of it. This second comment is actually Tony Yates. This is all chronicled above on Noah Smith's post.
"Yates essentially recites the standard catechism: the Lucas Critique is really important, the '70s inflation proved it, SVaRs are a sort-of-acceptable alternative, New Keynesian models are OK except Calvo pricing is suspect, etc. etc. If you want to know how the average Freshwater-y DSGE-slinging macroeconomist thinks about his place in the cosmos, read Yates' post."
Noah adds that Yates catches himself a little bit:
"OK OK I'm being mean with selective quoting. Yates dutifully follows up with this quote: "[T]here’s the risk that we come to seem like a cult bent on disengaging, concerned to interact with those outside the cult only so far as is necessary to squeeze them for the money we need to continue playing with our toys.")
Yates decided to condescend to writing a very long reply to these hapless critics who have nothing published, probably never been to a peer review in their lives. In explaining the reason why despite the irksomeness of it all he still replied to these-absolutely know-nothing-critics he says something very interesting:
"Three concerns make it hard to resist attempting a defence, however. First, there is the concern that the macro project at large gets tarred with the same brush as the microfounders who insist almost religiously that prices are flexible and markets are efficient. So it’s worth trying to disentangle the defence of the project as a whole from defending those substantive positions. Second, there’s the concern that someone with some influence might take Adam or others who say these things seriously. Third, there’s the concern that if people inside macro don’t respond to challenge, no matter how high-handed and ill thought through, there’s the risk that we come to seem like a cult bent on disengaging, concerned to interact with those outside the cult only so far as is necessary to squeeze them for the money we need to continue playing with our toys. [Perhaps that day has already come?!]"
"In my time in central banks one definitely encountered a breed of policymaker that behaved as if they were above actually doing macro, but yet seemed to know all the answers for sure, and know how macro should be done [of course by someone else, not them]. It seemed to many of us who observed them as though they had fallen victim to the illusion that since they had done so well in life, their gut feelings about stuff must really be valuable, and that perhaps that’s where macroeconomic truth lay, in what they as great individuals felt and said. Many can tell stories of attempting to advise them, and being met with the condescending twinkle in the eye that translates as ‘Ah, so that’s what’s true in your silly little toy world, is it, tee hee, how quaint that you think such things worth repeating, well, I can only hope that one day you glimmer the real source of truth, namely, the instinctive knowledge of the chosen’. If the meme that microfounded macro has ‘no merit’ were to gain any more traction, I assert that great danger would lie ahead!: theorising that is incomplete and ‘accidental’ [in the sense meant by Krugman]; policy promises that are unverifiable; discretion untamable; and a search for new economic knowledge that is empty and futile (since the truth is already felt by the great policymakers, and the only way to divine it is to draw the few charts they ask us to plot, and sit around and wait until the charts work their inner magic and they are kind enough to write it down in speeches for us)."
http://longandvariable.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/why-microfoundations-have-merit/
I think that's great. I love this total contempt for these prima donnas that these poor academic economists have to deal with who actually thing their 'gut feelings' matter. Isn't this really at the crux to what the-let's just say it-insufferably pompous attitude that you get in talking from anyone from Scott Sumner, to Stephen Williamson, to Bob Yates? It's the idea that we laypeople, the GREAT UNWASHED don't even get to have an opinion until we have read the right textbook and probably taken a good shower as well.
There's real contempt for 'intuition', 'discretion, and 'gut feelings.' In economics presumably there are no gut feelings just properly microfounded models. The rest is pig latin. It makes me think of the time the Democrats had the DSGE people testify before Congress-Robert Solow was there. The basic viewpoint one DSGE-slinging economist had is no doubt the common view: if you have anything to say about economics, it should be able to be said in a DSGE model. If not, then your basically just making grimacing sounds or guttural grunts-you're not really speaking.
Yet, he gives the game away by admitting that these grunting prima donnas are actual policymakers who might just cancel their funding if they aren't able to restrain their contempt just a little bit. As Unlearning Econ pointed out recently, it's possible to have an economy without economists. Clearly Yates understands this.
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