Semi-Daily Journal

"The National Review's economics coverage is by and large several standard deviations in quality below what the magazine should be able to muster. The puzzling question is 'Why?'"

I have asked the same question and sadly decided that though the radical right may be very well educated they wish to keep others from being so. We send our kids to Brown, you send your kids to Bob Jones. Can you imagine a child of Larry Kudlow turning down Dartmouth because the school is too liberal [huh]?

"The puzzling question is 'Why?'"

Political allegiance comes first. Ideological commitment matters more than real facts. Or, in the old management mantra: Appearance *is* reality. Delineate appearance and you make reality.

Whether reality will be congenial enough to agree is, of course, an open question. Cf. Iraq.

They prefer ideology to economics. It is the same type of product that is produced when creationists write about the fossil record.

As Bill Clinton wrote in his NY Post Op-Ed, "I disagree with his tax policy but admire his spin. "

That about sums it up. We disagree with the economic analysis and are amazed by the spin.

They are all political science types at NR. Kudlow himself, though an economist by career, was educated at "Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs", not the economics department. Most right-leaning economists are even more libertarian than NR, for whatever reason.

Why? Could it be becasue NRO is a priori committed to supporting the administration's economic proposals, and no reputable economist agrees with those proposals?

Why? Nothing spoils a good economist like ideology.

The National Review's economics coverage is by and large several standard deviations in quality below what the magazine should be able to muster. The puzzling question is "Why?"

Not so puzzling. The quality of NR's economics coverage is directly proportional to the quality of Republican economic policy. Since this is several standard deviations below what the party should be able to muster, it follows that NR's coverage will be equally bad.

The simple reason is the readership of that magazine does not want to know the facts but a version of the facts that support their belief structure.

What is really amuzing is how often the National Review contradicts itself. Kudlow's colleagues are complaining that the money supply is growing too fast and they fear inflation. These same colleagues, however, cheer every bit of demand stimulus from tax cuts they can find. Then again - read enough of Kudlow and you'll see that his FED bashing waffles from the FED is printing too much money to the FED is being too tight - in the same week!

The truth is that the FED has increased monetary aggregates dramatically over the past couple of years by any measure of the money supply. But GDP growth has been dismal nonetheless. I tried to capture the ratio of GDP to M2 (its 'velocity' whatever that means) since 1999 when it was 2.05. It was also 2.05 in 2000. But in 2002 it was 1.86.

I think all the above comments are forgetting
about the measuring yard stick being used here.
The actual question is not why economics coverage
is sub par at NR in absolute terms, which it obviously is,
but why is it low compared to the also absolutely sub par economics coverage at the Nation?

If you're going to say that the reason is that
ideology trumps economics, then you must argue
that this is true to a greater extent at NR then
at the Nation.

Personally I'm not quite convinced that this
is true and that hence the relative quality
is low. I seem to recall several atrocious pieces by Al Cockburn (even A. Sen, who's most likely
sympathetic, wrote in to complain). As far as absolute quality goes, yeah, it's pretty dismal
at both places.

Anyway, the argument of "what do you expect,
they're Republicans" is gratuitous, a bit
circular and explains diddly squat, unless you
really believe that there is no high quality
registered-Republican economist out there.
The question is why doesn't NRO get one of those
(say Robert Barro, who already writes for
Business Week) rather then guys like Luskin.
Maybe outside their price range.

Rdk

Maybe I missed something, but did Brad DeLong ever address whether The Nation's economic reporting is any better than The National Review's? I accept that The National Review is biased in its coverage, but I would be very interested in knowing whether The Nation is any less biased.

As I recall, the original correspondent was making a general point that political publications get a lot of things wrong when held under scrutiny by a specialist in the field.

I guess the question was intended as a segue to another rebuttal of a National Review economics column, but I read the opening expecting to read some comparison to The Nation later on, and was sort of surprised not to find any.

RdK

Barro et al. have reputations for writing clear and honest analyses. For example, Barro's 2000 Business Week piece on Social Security proposals undermined the fact that the Bush free lunch argument for partial privatization was simply bad finance. The reason NRO does not have Barro write for them is less to do with price tags and more to do with the fact that Barro would not endorse their dishonest spin.

Come to think of it the answer might be simply "product differentiation". Most right wing
economist tend to be of the liberterian stripe
but you can already get that stuff at places
like Reason, or to some extent Business Week
and WSJ. NR, while giving an occasional nod to
liberterian style conservatism also often makes an effort to distinguish itself as a conservative's conservative magazine. So in avoiding the standard liberterian economics they're just choosing a different location in quality space.
Bad economics, but good business practice.

Rdk

I'd agree that the economics in NR is bad, but its hardly worse than that in The Nation.

The Nation routinely advocates for the "Living Wage" movement. Actual implementation of a "Living Wage" on a large scale would almost surely destroy the economy.

The Nation routinely prints the rantings of the radical anti-globalization crowd, despite the mountain of evidense suggesting that free trade is good for economies rich and poor alike.

Does The Nation regularly print pieces on monteary policy as silly as Kudlow's? No, but that's because The Nation doesn't print much on monetary policy at all. But that doesn't mean they aren't advocating truly bad economics.

Huh?

What is the logic in that statement?

Being on TV is only proof that you're on TV, not that you have any idea what you're doing. By that logic Brad shouldn't question anything Regis Philbin says about the economy, because he's on TV.

Get a grip, dude.

There is probably room for a whole stew of reasons for any publication printing what it prints. The point here that catches my eye is that offered by rdk. Some part of the choice must have to do with getting and holding a certain kink of reader. Kudlow is a name, a celebrity. He has a certain matter-of-fact, seen-it-all-before delivery on TV that some people find convincing. His slavish approval of administration policies and his name, taken together, sound like a formula for getting and holding readers of a certain kind. Just not the same readers as show up at Brad's web log.

This may not be a "commercial" decision in the sense that Kudlow brings in revenue (though he may), but it is commercial in the sense that there is some "coin" the publishers value highly, having to do with who reads their publication and what those readers say about it, and Kudlow gets it for them. The publishers value that "coin", that "sucess" as they define it, more highly "truth" as Brad defines it. They wouldn't be the only ones.

Did I say "kink"? Can't imagine why. Meant something like group, type. Please, please, I don't want link Kudlow and kink.

While I agree that Kudlow is a poseur, it would be hard to improve on this recent piece about the "Boskin boon":

http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett063003.asp

I don’t know why Brad is puzzled. Since the late 1970’s the conservative movement has advocated a policy of using tax cuts to force a shrinkage in government spending. This policy was first advocated by Milton Friedman in an influential article. Honest, competent conservative economists like Friedman never believed that deficits were a good thing, only that it was a lesser evil, and perhaps a temporary one on the road to a small-government utopia. At the same time there arose a crank school of economics called “supply side economics” that argued that deficits really didn’t matter after all. Republican politicians and their journalistic acolytes promoted this theory either cynically, or out of ignorance. N.R. hires crank economists like Kudlow because they wouldn’t be able to find reputable economists to spout the party line. I’m sure Brad knows all this so his puzzlement is perhaps rhetorical.

I don’t know why Brad is puzzled. Since the late 1970’s the conservative movement has advocated a policy of using tax cuts to force a shrinkage in government spending. This policy was first advocated by Milton Friedman in an influential article. Honest, competent conservative economists like Friedman never believed that deficits were a good thing, only that it was a lesser evil, and perhaps a temporary one on the road to a small-government utopia. At the same time there arose a crank school of economics called “supply side economics” that argued that deficits really didn’t matter after all. Republican politicians and their journalistic acolytes promoted this thetheory either cynically, or out of ignorance. N.R. hires crank economists like Kudlow because they wouldn’t be able to find reputable economists to spout the party line. I’m sure Brad knows all this so his puzzlement is perhaps rhetorical.

Washington Post

Lawrence Kudlow is an economist, contributing editor of National Review magazine and frequent guest on "The McLaughlin Group," where he often argues in favor of deep tax cuts. He is also a recovering alcoholic and cocaine addict.

Kudlow attributes his bout with drug and alcohol abuse partly to the pressure he felt when he was chief economist and senior managing director of Bear, Stearns & Co., a Wall Street investment firm....

If I could inject a serious note into this discussion, there is a debate going on among supply-sider-types about monetary policy. They all agree that we went through a period when Fed policy was deflationary and that the policy reversed and has been reflationary for the last 2 years. Now, some such as myself, believe that reflation has gone on long enough and that it is time for the Fed to be concerned about inflation down the road. Brian Wesbury takes the most extreme view in this regard and has been calling for the Fed to tighten for more than a year. Larry is on the opposite side, feeling that deflationary pressures are still present and that further easing is required. The rest of us are in between, leaning either one way or another.

Larry's current argument is that the stimulus afforded by the tax cut will increase the demand for money. Unless that demand is satisfied by the Fed, we could experience a shortage of liquidity relative to the demand for it, regardless of what the money growth figures are.

This is a plausible argument, but wrong, I think, because Larry confuses the demand for money with the demand for capital. In fact, I would argue that the demand for money will likely fall in the future precisely because the demand for capital will rise. That will raise real interest rates, which will encourage households to shift out of cash and into time deposits, which presently have very low yields. Therefore, the narrow money supply may shrink due to the actions of households and businesses, not because the Fed is too tight in some sense. If the Fed were to interpret this shrinkage as a failure on its part, a la Friedman's Great Contraction, and were to push on the monetary pedal by aggressively buying bonds, we could find ourselves with a dangerously inflationary monetary policy.

I would appreciate serious comments.

" If I could inject a serious note into this discussion...."

You don't think I was being serious by citing your NR piece?

That was funny Patrick.

Look everybody - Bartlett is worried about the problems resulting from the Bush tax cuts being overwhelmingly successful. Keep preachin' that old time religion brother.

Where is this demand for capital going to come from when the economy is suffering from overcapacity? With the states putting the fiscal squeeze on the middle class of this country where is demand going to come from to ease the overcapacity problem. Foreigners may push interest rates up to keep buying US Treasuries, so the wealthy may put their returns from their investment in Bush Inc. into those same treasuries or time deposits. But the loans banks will make at the higher rates will be to consumers. There won't be loans for capital because there is a glut of capital. Heaven help us if the consumers don't borrow at the higher rates.