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Astonishing: economists got something right

From the comments, a superb paper on the euro:

The euro: It can’t happen, It’s a bad idea, It won’t last.
US economists on the EMU, 1989 – 2002

This paper being written by European Commission bods in 2009 to show just how wrong all those damn Yankees were.

Snigger.

4 thoughts on “Astonishing: economists got something right”

  1. Alan Blinder’s “Murphy’s Law of economic policy: Economists have the least influence on policy where they know the most and are most agreed; they have the most influence on policy where they know the least and disagree most vehemently.”

  2. Look at the Abstract, and its purported purpose. Was that really the purpose, or was the real purpose a bit of cheap point-scoring (like the present post, which at least has the merit of obviously intending to crow)?

    Anyway, to ask the question is to know the answer.

    So, next question(s): Who funded these shills, and in what universe is their study academically or intellectually virtuous?

  3. From that paper:

    Our survey of approximately 170 publications shows (a) that US academic economists
    concentrated on the question “Is the EMU a good or bad thing?”, usually adopting the
    paradigm of optimum currency areas as their main analytical vehicle, (b) that they displayed
    considerable scepticism towards the single currency, (c) that economists within the Federal
    Reserve System had a less analytical and a more pragmatic approach to the single currency
    than US academic economists, and (e) that US economists adjusted their views and analytical
    approach as European monetary unification progressed.

    Just how much economic advice should we take from people who don’t know what the fourth letter of the alphabet is?

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