Chris Blattman

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Signs of partisanship gone even more horribly awry

Last October, I won the Nobel Prize in economics for my work on unemployment and the labor market. But I am unqualified to serve on the board of the Federal Reserve — at least according to the Republican senators who have blocked my nomination. How can this be?

The easy answer is to point to shortcomings in our confirmation process and to partisan polarization in Washington. The more troubling answer, though, points to a fundamental misunderstanding: a failure to recognize that analysis of unemployment is crucial to conducting monetary policy.

Peter Diamond in the New York Times.

 

One Response

  1. Are you not assuming (wrongly, in my opinion) that there is no serious political bias in the Nobel selection process? Sure, you get the occasional Becker or even Hayek, but these are far outweighed by the Krugmans, Myrdals and (of course to a lesser extent) Diamonds.
    Diverging for a moment into fantasy, were I an economically-literate Republican, I would not from my ideological perspective wish the Fed’s board to be populated by Keynesians (whether New, Neo- or Neo) or even (given the current political climate) Chicago types. Were these Republicans actually acting out of an understanding of their own rhetoric, they would come to this same conclusion, but out of competent adherence to ideology rather than partisanship.

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