Ezra Klein: Economists to Romney campaign: That’s not what our research says

[SunsetDreams]

On Tuesday, the Romney campaign responded to the fire it’s taking from economic analysts by unleashing some artillery of their own. They released a paper by four decorated economists associated with the campaign — Glenn Hubbard, Greg Mankiw, John Taylor, and Kevin Hassett — that tried to lend some empirical backing to “The Romney Program for Economic Recovery, Growth, and Jobs.”

Hubbard, Mankiw, Taylor and Hassett make three main points: The first is that this recovery has been terribly slow, even by the standards of post-financial crisis recoveries. The second is that the Obama administration made a grievous error by relying on stimulus. And the third is that Romney’s tax and economic plans would usher in an era of rapid growth that would both be good for the country and provide the boost to revenues and employment necessary to make their numbers work out.

Each of these sections include supporting documents from independent economists. And so I contacted some of the named economists to ask what they thought of the Romney campaign’s interpretation of their research. In every case, they responded with a polite version of Marshall McLuhan’s famous riposte. The Romney campaign, they said, knows little of their work. Or of their policy proposals.

....

That is to say, what Bordo found was fairly consistent with the rest of the literature on this topic: Recessions associated with a housing bust tend to have very slow recoveries. That’s rather different than the Romney campaign’s interpretation of Bordo’s paper, which is that the features of this particular recession couldn’t explain the slow recovery, and thus you had to conclude that “America took a wrong turn in economic policy in the past three years.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/08/economists-to-romney-campaign-thats-not-what-our-research-says/

Romney's paper is nothing but a puff piece by the authors. When will this guy stop lying to the American public?

[cantbeserious]

1. Republicans Never Stop Lying - Lying Is Their Only Strategy For Winning

eom

[snot]

2. It would be helpful if some cd translate this into

conclusion-inescapable-even-to-the brainwashed-speak.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

3. Summary: Romney's economists mischaracterize the quantitative literature

relevant to each of the three main points laid out in the OP snippet of Ezra's article.

Ezra contacted an independent economist not on Romney's payroll regarding each of the three points, and not one remotely agreed with the interpretation of the quantitative literature in the Romney-financed "white paper" by Glen Hubbard, Greg Mankiw, John Taylor and Kevin Hassett, Here's a summary of what each independent economist told him:

(1) "Recovery has been terribly slow, even by the standards of post-financial crisis recoveries."

Michael Bordo of Rutgers, an author of a Cleveland Fed study cited by Romney's economists, attributed the slow speed of the recovery to the debt overhang in the residential housing market. Obama's policies cannot be blamed for this, since there has been little government interference in the housing market that would have interfered with huge price declines and recognized bank losses Bordo believes are necessary to bring housing demand back into balance with housing supply.

(2) "The Obama administration made a grievous error by relying on stimulus."

An objective survey of the quantitative economic literature on the effectiveness of the stimulus located 15 studies, 13 of which found positive effects, and one of which dealt only with one minor component of the stimulus. But Romney's economists ignored the 13 positive studies and cited only the other two. One of the two was by John Taylor of the ultra-right Hoover Institution at Stanford. But Taylor hismelf was one of the four economists on Romney's payroll to write this white paper. So Taylor just cited himself and ignored all the other relevant studies, all of which disagree with him strongly!

The other study cited by the Romney white paper dealt only with the "Cash for Clunkers" program, a minor part of the $750 billion stimulus, accounting for only $4 billion. Ezra contacted its author, Amir Sufi of the U of Chicago, who told him that he agreed with the majority of actual quantitative work on the stimulus that found large positive effects.

(3) "Romney's tax and economic plans would usher in an era of rapid growth" that would add one half to a full percentage point to the rare of economic growth.

An Appendix to the paper lists four studies, two of them co-authored by Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach, whom Ezra telephoned. It turns out the Romney economists' growth effect estimates come from Auerbach's simulation of the effect of replacing the income tax with a consumption tax. Since such a policy move would be a huge shift not advocated by Romney, the estimated effect on growth is a fantasy.

So it was three up three down for investigation of the quantitative claims made by Romney's four economists in their easy "white paper" payday. Clearly, they did not anticipate that any journalist would check their outrageous misinterpretations of the economic literature. IMO Ezra Klein has supplied us with yet another excellent example of thorough policy analysis reporting.

[snot]

4. Thank you!

[ProSense]

5. Romney has a

habit of doing that.

Jared Diamond: Romney Mischaracterized My Work
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021060909