Paul Krugman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Image:Krugman FPO.jpg
Paul Krugman

Paul Robin Krugman (born February 28, 1953) is a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University. He is also an author and a columnist for The New York Times, writing a twice-weekly op-ed for the newspaper since 2000.

Krugman is well known in academia for his work in trade theory, which provides a model in which firms and countries produce and trade because of economies of scale and for his textbook explanations of currency crises and New Trade Theory. He was a critic of the "New Economy" of the late 1990s. Krugman also criticized the fixed exchange rates of the island Asia nations and Thailand before the 1997 East Asian financial crisis, and of investors such as Long-Term Capital Management that relied on the fixed rates just before the 1998 Russian financial crisis.

Krugman is generally considered a neo-Keynesian [1], with his views outlined in his books such as Peddling Prosperity. His International Economics: Theory and Policy (currently in its seventh edition) is a standard textbook on international economics without calculus. In 1991 he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal by the American Economic Association.

Krugman is an ardent critic of the George W. Bush administration and its foreign and domestic policy. Unlike many economic pundits, he is also regarded as an important scholarly contributor by his peers.[2][3] He has written over 200 scholarly papers and 20 books[4]—some academic, and some written for the layperson.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Krugman (pronounced as Kroog-man) was born and grew up on Long Island, and majored in economics (though his initial interest was in history) as an undergraduate at Yale University. He earned a Ph.D. from MIT in 1977 and taught at Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley, the London School of Economics, and Stanford University before joining the faculty of Princeton University, where he has been since 2000. He is married to Robin Wells, a fellow professor at Princeton, his second marriage;[5] he has no children from either.[6] From 1982 to 1983, he spent a year working at the Reagan White House as a staff member of the Council of Economic Advisers. He is also a member of the international economic body, the Group of Thirty.

When Bill Clinton came into office in 1992, it was expected that Krugman would be given a leading post, but he was passed over in favor of Laura Tyson primarily due to the administration's early flirtation with industrial policy. However, this allowed him to turn to writing journalism for wider audiences, first for Fortune and Slate, later for The Harvard Business Review, Foreign Policy, The Economist, Harper's, and Washington Monthly.

In the early-1990s, he helped popularize the argument made by Laurence Lau and Alwyn Young, among others, that the growth of economies in East Asia was not the result of new and original economic models, but rather increased capital and labor inputs, which did not result in an increase in total factor productivity. His prediction was that future economic growth in East Asia would slow as it became more difficult to generate economic growth from increasing inputs.

In the 1990s, Krugman's focus was on what can be described as policy economics, which he attempted to explain to the general audience in such works as Peddling Prosperity and columns attacking what he described as "policy entrepreneurs" who were focused single-mindedly on particular solutions, which they proposed as solving every conceivable crisis.

He said that to answer Pop Internationalism, "I would have to write essays for non-economists that were clear, effective, and entertaining."

Krugman worked on an advisory board for Enron throughout most of 1999, being paid $37,500[7] before New York Times rules required him to resign when he took a job as a columnist. He stated later it was to "[offer] Enron executives briefings on economic and political issues" and required him to "spend four days in Houston." However, when the story of the Enron scandal broke, critics accused him of having a conflict of interest and the job of having been a bribe to control media coverage, charges he denies. He points out that in columns written before and after the scandal, he disclosed his past Enron relationship when he wrote about the company.[7][8]

Since January 2000, he has contributed a twice-weekly column to the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, which has made him, in the words of the Washington Monthly, "the most important political columnist in America... he is almost alone in analyzing the most important story in politics in recent years — the seamless melding of corporate, class, and political party interests at which the Bush administration excels."[9] In 2007, he began supplementing his Times column with a blog. In introducing it, he wrote, "Many of the posts will be supplements to my regular columns; I’ll be using this space to present the kind of information I can’t provide on the printed page – especially charts and tables, which are crucial to the way I think about most of the issues I write about."[10]

In September, 2003, Krugman published a collection of his columns under the title, The Great Unraveling. Taken as a whole, it was a scathing attack on the Bush's administration's economic and foreign policies. His main argument was that the large deficits generated by the Bush administration—generated by decreasing taxes, increasing public spending, and fighting a war in Iraq — were in the long run unsustainable, and would eventually generate a major economic crisis. The book was a best-seller.[11]

In 2007, Krugman published The Conscience of a Liberal. The book rebuked the Bush administration for widening the gap between the rich and poor. Krugman proposed a "new New Deal", which included placing more emphasis on social and medical programs and less on national defense.

[edit] Awards

[edit] Criticism

A November 13, 2003 article in The Economist [13] reads: "A glance through his past columns reveals a growing tendency to attribute all the world's ills to George Bush…Even his economics is sometimes stretched…Overall, the effect is to give lay readers the illusion that Mr Krugman's perfectly respectable personal political beliefs can somehow be derived empirically from economic theory."

In his May 22, 2005 farewell column, New York Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent attacked Krugman: "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults."[14] Okrent did not provide specific examples for his view, but a few days later was drawn from retirement into an email back-and-forth with Krugman, publicly hosted by the new ombudsman's column.[15] Okrent's chief complaint (which may have been prompted by conservative commentator Donald Luskin[16]) was that in a May 2004 column, Krugman inappropriately mixed numbers from the Establishment and Household employment data, without explaining to readers that these two surveys use differing, and incompatible, methods. Krugman, in fact, did not use any Household data. He did provide a number for the necessary monthly job creation in order for employment to pace population growth, which was based on Census data.[17] However, this form of "mixing" data sources is not uncommon (The same methodology is used in numerous government and journalistic documents, including the Bush Administration's 2004 Economic Report of the President).[18] The administration assumed a slightly lower rate of "adult non-elderly" population growth, but nonetheless came up with a similar number: 110k per month, against Krugman's 140k.[19] Okrent's original attack was effectively rebutted to the point where Okrent acknowledged not understanding a key concept involved.[20] He further acknowledged drawing upon complaint emails from Krugman's political opponents.

On CNBC on August 7, 2004 on Tim Russert's eponymous television program, Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly confronted Krugman in a heated discussion, calling Krugman a "quasi-socialist." Krugman replied, "You take a look at anything I've written about economics, and I'm not a socialist. You know, that's a slander." When O'Reilly responded, "I said quasi," Krugman retorted, "Well, that's a wonderful — then you're a quasi-murderer…quasi is a pretty open thing."[21]

Krugman's critics have accused him of employing a shrill, even hysterical, rhetorical style.[9][22][23] Some Krugman supporters responded by creating the site Shrillblog.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Authored or co-authored

[edit] Edited or co-edited

[edit] References

  1. ^ The New York Times, "In Economics Departments, a Growing Will to Debate Fundamental Assumptions". Retrieved July 11, 2007.
  2. ^ a b Avinash Dixit, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Spring, 1993), pp. 173-188, In Honor of Paul Krugman: Winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  3. ^ a b Paul Krugman, 2004. Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  4. ^ The New York Times, "Columnist Biography: Paul Krugman". Retrieved April 15, 2007.
  5. ^ Paul Krugman, "Your questions answered", blog, January 10, 2003, retrieved December 19, 2007
  6. ^ Paul Krugman, [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/about-my-son/"About my son", New York Times blog, December 19, 2007
  7. ^ a b Paul Krugman, "My Connection With Enron, One More Time", Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  8. ^ Paul Krugman, "Me and Enron". Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  9. ^ a b Confessore, Nicholas (December 2002). Comparative Advantage. Washington Monthly. Retrieved on 2007-02-05.
  10. ^ Krugman, Paul (September 18, 2007). Introducing This Blog. The New York Times. Retrieved on 2007-09-19.
  11. ^ "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century". Powell's Books. Retrieved on 2007-11-22.
  12. ^ Mother Jones, Paul Krugman, August 7, 2005. Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  13. ^ The Economist, Face Value: Paul Krugman, one-handed economist
  14. ^ Salon.com, The War Room: Did Krugman win by T.K.O.?
  15. ^ Uggabugga: Krugman vs Okrent
  16. ^ The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid: "It's the Economic Lies, Stupid"
  17. ^ The Semi-Daily Journal of Brad DeLong: Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Danny Okrent Jumps the Shark Once Again Edition)
  18. ^ 2004 Economic Report of the President The relevant number appears on p. 94 of the document, which is p. 99 of the PDF file.
  19. ^ The Semi-Daily Journal of Brad DeLong: "Mix and Match"
  20. ^ NYT Public Editor's Journal 31 May 2005: "Paul Krugman Responds..."
  21. ^ The Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive: Transcript of debate moderated by Tim Russert, August 7, 2004
  22. ^ Peter Ferrara, National Review, The Hysterical Opposition, August 22, 2001. Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  23. ^ Jack Shafer, Slate, Raines-ing in Andrew Sullivan

[edit] External links

Image:Wikiquote-logo-en.svg
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Paul Krugman

ca:Paul Krugman de:Paul Krugman el:Πωλ Κρούγκμαν es:Paul Krugman fr:Paul Krugman it:Paul Krugman ja:ポール・クルーグマン no:Paul Krugman pt:Paul Krugman ru:Кругман, Пол fi:Paul Krugman sv:Paul Krugman

Retrieved from "http://india.smashits.com/wikipedia/Paul_Krugman"
Views
Personal tools

Toolbox