Friday, July 24, 2015

Paul Krugman and the MIT Economics Gang

For the record, we published our first "MIT Economics Gang" post in November 2013*, complete with this handy chart:
econ_mitcharticle04__01__960


Here's Professor Krugman with a very similar title, via Economists View (bolding=mine):

Paul Krugman: The M.I.T. Gang
The MIT school of economics:

The M.I.T. Gang, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times:
Goodbye, Chicago boys. Hello, M.I.T. gang.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the term “Chicago boys” was originally used to refer to Latin American economists, trained at the University of Chicago, who took radical free-market ideology back to their home countries. The influence of these economists was part of a broader phenomenon: The 1970s and 1980s were an era of ascendancy for laissez-faire economic ideas and the Chicago school...

But that was a long time ago. Now a different school is in the ascendant, and deservedly so.

It’s actually surprising how little media attention has been given to the dominance of M.I.T.-trained economists in policy positions and policy discourse. But it’s quite remarkable. Ben Bernanke has an M.I.T. Ph.D.; so do Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, and Olivier Blanchard, the enormously influential chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. Mr. Blanchard is retiring, but his replacement, Maurice Obstfeld, is another M.I.T. guy — and another student of Stanley Fischer, who taught at M.I.T. for many years and is now the Fed’s vice chairman. ...

M.I.T.-trained economists, especially Ph.D.s from the 1970s, play an outsized role ... in policy discussion across the Western world. And yes, I’m part of the same gang.

So what distinguishes M.I.T. economics, and why does it matter? ...

At M.I.T..., Keynes never went away. To be sure, stagflation showed that there were limits to what policy can do. But students continued to learn about the imperfections of markets and the role that monetary and fiscal policy can play in boosting a depressed economy....
...MORE

*Specifically:

Nov. 19, 2013
UPDATED--Summers, Krugman, Secular Stagnation? Seriously? (special bonus: a map of the whole MIT economics gang!)

And:
Nov.19, 2013
More on Larry Summers and the MIT Econ Gang

Just...for the record.