Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Jeff Cox — Why the Fuss Over Reinhart and Rogoff Is Overblown


Another side of the story.

CNBC NetNet
Why the Fuss Over Reinhart and Rogoff Is Overblown
Jeff Cox | Senior Writer

Here is R&R's response.

INET
Reinhart and Rogoff Respond to Criticism


9 comments:

Matt Franko said...

Yeah this is really some "NEW" economic thinking! LOL!

Nothing is ever coming out of that organization either other than "money"....

Unknown said...

info for goldbuggeristas and those who love to hate on goldbuggeristas:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/04/the-10-rules-of-goldbuggery/

Ryan Harris said...

So Up is down and down is up. Kumbaya they can have it both ways. Even if they are wrong it doesn't mean they drew wrong conclusions or made false claims or were dishonest because it is just data! And the massaging of the data, well all economists do that and never disclose it. Why would you disclose it! Come on everyone knows less debt is better. Y'all should know better than to criticize a Harvard prof. Their reputations put them beyond criticism by mere mortals.

Matt Franko said...

"INET Advisory Board members Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff today issued.... blah blah blah..."

INET is corrupt too then.

Matt Franko said...

Hey y,

Looks like if the price collapses they can always eat it:

http://nutritionfortheworld.wetpaint.com/page/Luxury+trend+of+eating+gold

MMMM ... MMMM good!

Not clear if you turn yellow after a while though...

Magpie said...

Cox says:

"Their primary claim—no, make that their only claim outside of 'popular media' citations—of R&R's influence on public policy is something they cryptically refer to as the 'Paul Ryan Budget'.

"That's a nod to the Republican Wisconsin congressman and former vice presidential candidate whose 'budget' has never been adopted as public policy. Yet it alone is considered an indictment of how much R&R has influenced policy".

In others words, R&R's influence has been greatly overblown. They are simply two academics telling like it is.

See here and judge by yourself:


How influential was the Rogoff-Reinhart study warning that high debt kills growth?
By Tim Fernholz, April 16, 2013

http://qz.com/75117/how-influential-was-the-study-warning-high-debt-kills-growth/

Note carefully the source of the information used.

PS: I'm based in Australia and I've heard of that study being used as a warning about the dangers we here are facing!

Magpie said...

In addition to the previous. Konczal has a guest post. From the post:

"All in all, these simple exercises suggest that the raw correlation between debt-to-GDP ratio and GDP growth probably reflects a fair amount of reverse casualty. We can’t simply use correlations like those used by RR (or ones presented here) to identify causal estimates."

By reverse causality the author means that is not debt/GDP increases that causes GDP falls, but the, well, reverse: GDP falls cause debt/GDP increases.

http://www.nextnewdeal.net/taxonomy/term/14/all

Matt Franko said...

Cox: If you are a "journalist" perhaps run down the series of events (ie "follow the money") to see why Princeton would publish this book co-authored by a Harvard professor and a Fellow at the Peterson Institute:

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8973.html

Who put up the dinero to publish the book at Princeton?

I smell the foul odor of Peterson....

Tyler said...

Jeff Cox co-authored a book entitled, "Debt, Deficits, and the Demise of the American Economy".