Scott Sumner

Archive for Scott Sumner

Scott Sumner Learns the Truth About Piketty Firsthand

I just love it when I see people first read Piketty and post their reactions (on FB or blogs) to the effect of, “Wait a second… Is he really saying that? Am I missing something?” Scott Sumner has such a post; this is truly the third such post I’ve seen from a college professor in […]

A Post Having Absolutely Nothing to Do With Level Targeting of NGDP Growth

I have been somewhat astonished by how much Scott Sumner has transformed the economics blogosphere (and even serious academics and policymakers) in favor of his views, which were almost universally considered absurd back in early 2009. It’s not just progressive Keynesians who have come around to his way of thinking, but even many free market […]

The Continuing Importance of Capital Theory

My new post at Mises Canada, which on Facebook I summarize as “Friedrich Hayek >> Scott Sumner.” An excerpt: Now if Sumner’s explanation were the main thing going on, there would be two immediate implications: (1) Booms are good things. And (2) Booms should naturally slide back into normal growth as wages and prices adjust; there is no […]

Scott Sumner Statistics: Trust, But Verify

I am being sincere when I say that I’m not accusing him of skullduggery, but I’ve noticed that sometimes Scott Sumner’s descriptions of the data lead the reader to imagine something far different from the reality. A good recent example of this is Scott’s discussion of his theory that it was (purposelessly) tight monetary policy […]

I Hope Nobody Took Brad DeLong’s Betting Advice

(Note for new readers: If this post seems obscure and petty, you must not have been around when this happened.) Back in February 2009, the new Obama Administration put out an economic outlook that forecast real GDP in 2013 would be 15.6% above the 2008 level. Greg Mankiw was quite skeptical of this forecast, thinking […]

One Last Post on Russ Roberts and Me Commenting on Krugman vs. Barro

The only reason I am posting this is that several people seem genuinely unaware of what point Russ Roberts and I were making in the recent blog war. (Here’s a summary in case you’ve stumbled upon the present post.) Let me try one last time to explain. If I can save just one reader, my […]

Two New Posts

At Mises Canada I have two posts up: ==> The first gives yet another illustration of my claim that Bernanke has been the FDR of central banking. This time, I discuss a HuffPo writer calling on Janet Yellen to “save the planet” (his term). ==> In this post, I endorse Russ Roberts’ complaint about Krugman’s […]

Krugman Unwittingly Confirms Scott Sumner’s Whole Point

[UPDATE below.] Free Advice readers know that if i’m Batman, then Paul Krugman is the Joker while Scott Sumner is the Riddler. (Now that I re-read that sentence, it turned out even cooler than I had imagined when I started typing it.) So this raises the question: What if Krugman ever directly attacks Sumner? Which […]