The Unassuming Economist

This post is different from the others on this website. Most of the website has economic content I considered noteworthy. (My curation of the content seems to have been useful to other economists, evidenced by the fact that we’ve attracted over a million visitors and chalked up over 7 million page views in our 14-year existence). This post is different. Over time, I plan to add a few posts like this one in which I will look back and take stock of some of the activities of my long (40-year) career. One activity that I invested in heavily was writing profiles of famous economists. I will discuss below why this stock-taking is more than a navel-gazing exercise and might be of some interest to our regular readers.

I just published a profile of Gabriel Zucman, the latest winner of the John Bates Clark award, the profession’s highest honor outside of the Nobel Prize. The IMF’s quarterly magazine, Finance & Development, has long had a section called Profiles in Economics, (forming the acronym pie). These profiles are hence called pies within the IMF’s Communication Department (COM), where I toiled happily from 2000 to 2008.

Why write pies?

It was unusual for an economist at the IMF to write so much for its magazine. But I was unusual. My move to COM was an unusual one, motivated by an amateur interest in writing and journalism. I realize that working for COM is as far away from real journalism as Trump is from truth, but working in COM was the closest I could get to scratching my journalistic itch. And scratch I did! I wrote 16 pies, which I suspect is the most of any writer for Finance and Development.

Why should this be of general interest? These profiles chart the course of the field of macroeconomics. In broad strokes, they show:

• The evolution of the profession: When I was in graduate school in the 1980s, the field of macroeconomics was polarized into two camps, saltwater and freshwater. Freshwater economists  tended to believe in the power of free markets and were dubious of the benefits of government policies – this economics was taught at departments that were close to rivers and lakes  such as Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, Minnesota and my alma mater, Rochester. Saltwater economists felt a healthy dose of government intervention was needed to remedy the ills of the market – this economics was taught at schools close to the coasts, such as Harvard and MIT. The profiles cover the main participants in this debate, and describe to lay readers how these economists chose to influence opinion in their favor through their academic work. While the polarization has since subsided somewhat, one still sees ripples of it when, for instance, the US Presidency and/or control of Congress shifts from Democrats to Republicans or vice versa. Democrats tend to draw from saltwater economists while Republicans favor freshwater economists.
  
• The evolution of the IMF: The IMF tended to be fairly free-market oriented. But over time, it has evolved towards a more balanced approach, for instance, by expressing some doubt about the benefits of financial globalization (the free movement of capital, i.e. companies, across national boundaries) and worrying that unfettered free markers sometimes breed excessive income inequality.
  
• The evolution of thought on specific issues: A detailed read of the profiles would show how the profession’s views have evolved on specific issues, such as why some countries (say Malawi) are so much poorer than others (say Sweden). The earlier approach, also practiced at the IMF, was to compare Malawi and Sweden along a whole host of dimensions, such as educational attainment and female labor force participation rates, and urge Malawi to make simultaneous progress along all those dimensions. This approach is described in my profile of Robert Barro. Thinking then moved on to a “growth diagnostics” approach, described in my profile of Dani Rodrik, which tried to isolate one or two critical dimensions that were holding back growth in Malawi.

How did I pick the people to profile? (I admit this part is navel-gazing, but I hope I have sucked you in by now.)

Looking back, I realize that the people I profiled fit into three categories:

• Category 1 (6 profiles): graduate school icons
• Category 2 (4 profiles): critics of the IMF
• Category 3 (6 profiles): other famous economists—economists whose professional activities I admired

Here are some observations on each of these categories and the underlying profiles.

Six of the profiles were of my graduate school icons. These are people whose work I had particularly enjoyed studying during my graduate studies at Rochester. It was efficient to profile them, as I wouldn’t have to spend hours poring over their academic work. I had already done that! It is not surprising, as a Rochester student, that I started with three freshwater icons, but I quickly crossed the aisle and profiled or interviewed three saltwater icons. I guess I was neither D or R but an Independent.

1. Martin Feldstein: Since this was my first profile, I was worried that something would go wrong: that Marty would regard the exercise as a waste of his time, that I would run out of questions, that my tape recorder would malfunction… None of that happened and yet the profile was almost derailed. After the text of the profile was in the bag, we went to get a picture of Marty taken to accompany the profile. The IMF’s photographer, Mike Spilotro, a top professional, suggested that Marty take off his glasses for the photo. Marty was equally eager that the glasses stay on. For a few minutes (which felt very long to me), we were at an impasse. Luckily, Mike backed off and I had my first profile. You can click on the hyperlink—that takes you to the profile and you can see how Marty looks with his glasses on. (Extra Credit: Can you find a picture of Marty on the web without his glasses?)

2. Robert Barro: I think this is my best profile because I was very conversant with Barro’s work; he was my macro professor for two semesters and on my thesis committee. I was happy when two of my Rochester colleagues said they loved the profile. I felt I must have gotten things right for such knowledgeable people to like it.

3. John Taylor

4. Rudi Dornbusch consented to this long interview at a time when he knew he did not have long to live – he died shortly after it appeared in print. This makes his answer to my last question particularly poignant. I asked if he had anything to add. He replied: “No, you have squeezed it all out of me.”

5. Stan Fischer: He is venerated in both saltwater and freshwater camps.

6. Olivier Blanchard: This appeared in The Globalist, and, as with my profile of Barro, benefitted from proximity. Blanchard was my boss at the IMF from 2008 to 2016 and my office was a few doors away from his. Blanchard often stopped by my office on the way to his own and talked to me a fair bit about the goal of his ongoing work.

Four of the profiled were critics of the IMF to varying degrees. It speaks well of the IMF that they were willing to let the institution’s critics be profiled in the house journal. This of course happened in part because the institution’s views evolved.

6. Joseph Stiglitz: The most strident critic, particularly of the IMF’s support for financial globalization.

7. Jeffrey Sachs: a critic of the IMF’s policy advice on Latin America and the transition economies.

8. Dani Rodrik: a critic of the IMF’s policy advice to developing economies.

9. George Akerlof: The mildest critic. I think he just wanted a “kinder, gentler” IMF. This was an aspiration I shared.

The remaining five were profiled for various idiosyncratic reasons – generally my admiration for the person’s work:

11. Nouriel Roubini (English, French and Spanish versions): I had invited Nouriel to give a talk at the IMF, at which he predicted the start of the Global Financial Crisis. After the talk became famous, it made sense to do a full profile.

12. Christopher Pissarides: Admiration for his work on labor markets – which was my specialty as well – was the reason.

13. Lars Svensson (English, French and Spanish): admiration for his work on monetary economics was the reason.
14. Assaf Razin: Admiration for the work and the man were the reason. I had gotten to know him personally.

15. Marianne Bertrand: Admiration for her work was the reason. It says something about the biases in my network that she is the only woman among the 16 people I have profiled.

16. Fred Bergsten: Admiration for the work was the reason. But in this case, the work did not consist of writing academic articles, but starting a successful think tank, the Peterson Institute.