Wednesday, January 23, 2008

EconJournalWatch

EconJournalWatch (Jan, 2008) is now online. Dan Klein and his colleagues get a lot of credit for keeping this project not just alive, but readable and interesting. (Full disclosure: colleagues Wendell Cox and Chris Redfearn and I have a piece in this volume. We criticize a recent QJE paper by Nathaniel Baum-Snow, who responds with a defense of his article.)

Editor Klein and his colleague Harika Anna Barlett contribute "Paul Krugman and the Have-Nots," an elaborate dissection of Krugman's hundreds of NY Times op-eds. Klein and Barlett find that the statist policies that Krugman embraces are not as "equitable" as the writer presumes.

It's an old story; those on the left love to assume that they are on the side of the angels. It's not very pretty. But Krugman's case, Klein and Barlett show, is special. He is very smart and very shrill.