Recent quotes:

Evening Must Read: Mark Thoma: The Attack of the Anti-Keynesians - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

“When the Great Recession hit the economy… mainstream macroeconomic models… in use… provided little insight… …and… little guidance… [to] fiscal policy in particular. So we should not have been surprised when many people turned to a model that had been developed to address precisely these types of questions, the Keynesian model, for guidance. Was this guidance useful?… The insights and advice… turned out to be remarkably good…. Modern macroeconomic models were not up to the task when they were needed the most, and nobody should be faulted for turning to the ‘old fashioned’ Keynesian model… for guidance…
#Mark-Thoma - equitablegrowth.org

Lunchtime Must-Read: Mark Thoma: On Paul Krugman's: 'John and Maynard’s Excellent Adventure' - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

IS-LM models were built to answer exactly the kinds of questions we encountered during the Great Recession and… provided good answers…. DSGE models were built to address other issues, and it’s not surprising they didn’t do very well when they were pushed to address questions they weren’t designed to answer…
#Mark-Thoma - equitablegrowth.org

I Am Beginning to Think That the Backlash Against the Skills-Gap Story of Wage Inequality Has Gone Too Far...: Focus - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

I have always been impressed by vir illustris Mark Hoekstra’s regression-discontinuity story of the value of being admitted to U.T. Austin. As the very sharp Jordan Weissman reports: Jordan Weissman: Does It Matter Where You Go to College?: “Study 3: IF I CAN’T GET INTO A GOOD STATE SCHOOL… …AM I DOOMED? Actually, yeah. You might be…. Mark Hoekstra… compared the earnings of white, male students who had barely missed the admissions cut-off for an unnamed public flagship university to those of students who had barely been accepted…. Enrolling at the flagship increased wages by 20 percent…
#Mark-Thoma #Inequality #Education #Mark-Hoekstra #Jordan-Weissmann #Skills-Gap #College - equitablegrowth.org

Morning Must-Read: Mark Thoma: The Best Investment the U.S. Could Make Is Affordable Higher Education - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Mark Thoma: The Best Investment the U.S. Could Make Is Affordable Higher Education: “The skills-gap story ignores the fact… …that education will never be the answer for everyone…. However… a college degree is a worthwhile investment…. Fortunately for me, CSU Chico, which was nearby, only charged approximately $100 per semester…. If it hadn’t been for the cheap tuition, I would have been stuck in that town with little hope of finding my potential
#Mark-Thoma #Inequality #Education #Human-Capital - equitablegrowth.org