This is Too Much

Jared Bernstein writes,

had R&R gone through the peer-review process, I’m fairly confident that a) the spreadsheet error would NOT have been found, but b) the paper would have been sent back to them for failing to provide even a cursory analysis of the possibility of reverse causality (slower growth leading to higher debt/GDP ratios vs. the R&R claim of the opposite). Re “a,” peer reviewers do not routinely replicate findings, though they should when possible (more work these days is with proprietary data sets which cannot legally be shared).

Pointer from Mark Thoma.

I have not been commenting on the Reinhart and Rogoff fracas. My view of empirical macroeconomics is that there are hardly any reliable findings, so I always brushed aside the notion that there is some adverse growth impact of having a debt to GDP ratio of 90 percent. But some people took it seriously. And now the left is howling that all of the austerity policies in the world are due to Reinhart and Rogoff, and they should be burned at the stake, or something.

But speaking of unreliable findings in empirical macroeconomics, this is the same Jared Bernstein who co-authored a memo for President Obama saying that the multiplier is 1.54, as if we know what it is with that precision (I do not think we know with any precision that it even has a positive sign.) He has about as much right to complain about Reinhart and Rogoff as a crack-head has to complain about somebody who got drunk once.

And do read F. F. Wiley. (pointer from Tyler Cowen)

10 thoughts on “This is Too Much

  1. First I’ll say that I find this blog quite valuable, and I often encourage students to read the posts. I was very pleased to see the subtitle of the blog when it was established, and I think that this is the right way to approach disagreement. However, the posts don’t always live up to a reasonable standard of charitabilily. Here, for example, I am not claiming that the statement that Bernstein “has about as much right to complain about Reinhart and Rogoff as a crack-head has to complain about somebody who got drunk once” is untrue or unjustified, but it is pretty far from charitable, if only in the way the point is stated.

  2. I’m sympathetic with your view that all macroeconomics empirical research is unreliable, but the fact is they had a booboo in their spreadsheet. That just lowers their credibility even more. If we found a similar mistake in Bernstein’s 1.54 multiplier estimate, then they would be at the same level. For now it’s one economist with unverifiable research critiquing another economist’s research which is just as unverifiable *and has a mistake to boot*.

  3. “[T]his is the same Jared Bernstein who co-authored a memo for President Obama saying that the multiplier is 1.54, as if we know what it is with that precision (I do not think we know with any precision that it even has a positive sign.)”

    No, they wrote in that paper “As emphasized at many points in the analysis,
    there is substantial uncertainty around all of our estimates”. Why pretend they said something they didn’t?

    Stay charitable.

    • Didn’t stop him from helping to sell that turkey, nonetheless. I like how they were able to tell us how many jobs would go to women, by industry. That wasn’t science, it was a con job.

    • It’d be nice if policy advocates has enough intellectual integrity and discipline to say, “The multiplier is 1.54, plus or minus 3,” or, “with a 90% certainty of being between somewhere between -1 and 2”. Alas, they don’t.

      So, there’s a little wise policy (maybe ‘etiquette’ is the right way to say it) about the way you report these kinds of estimates by keeping the significant digits down to the level of a standard deviation. You don’t have to talk geek-speak to a general audience, but you don’t engage in the pretense that you’re more certain than you actually are.

      It would be perfectly legitimate for Kling to call Bernstein out for this at any time, but it is especially hypocritical and egregious when the pot calls the kettle black.

  4. Meh, if we were talking real charity, I would call Bernstein one of the undeserving poor.

  5. You may not have something you admit to being a macroeconomic theory, but I’m pretty sure you have macroeconomic opinions, if only by default or implication. If there are hardly any reliable empirical findings on the subject, what is the basis of those opinions? (Perhaps you are using “findings” in a narrow sense.)
    This question may be related to one that I think is often raised by certain free-market lines of thinking, including your own: Does our ignorance justify certain policies rather than others, or does it only justify reducing our confidence in our predictions of the outcome of any given policy?
    Not your main point in this post, I know, but perhaps of broader interest than Bernstein’s character.

  6. Anyone in academia from grad school and beyond has seen occasional chains of articles in the journals where author writes a paper, someone points out a perceived error, the author replies, etc.

    So the hysteria and venom over this particular exchange thus seems significant in itself. What shall we make of it?

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