How Did Economists Get It So Wrong
How Did Economists Get It So Wrong
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经济学家为何错得如此离谱
DOI：
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发表时间：
2009
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Krugman
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Paul;Krugman
现在很难相信，但不久前经济学家们还在为自己领域的成功而庆贺。这些成功——或者说他们是这么认为的——既具有理论意义，又具有实践意义，为该行业带来了一个黄金时代。从理论上来说，他们认为已经解决了内部纠纷。因此，现任国际货币基金组织首席经济学家、麻省理工学院的奥利维尔·布兰查德 (Olivier Blanchard) 在 2008 年题为《宏观状况》（即宏观经济学，研究衰退等宏观问题）的论文中宣称，“宏观状况良好”。他说，去年的战斗已经结束，并且出现了“广泛的愿景趋同”。而在现实世界中，经济学家相信一切都在掌控之中：芝加哥大学的罗伯特·卢卡斯 (Robert Lucas) 在 2003 年美国经济学会主席演讲中宣称，“预防抑郁症的核心问题已经解决”。 2004 年，前普林斯顿大学教授、现任美联储主席本·伯南克 (Ben Bernanke) 庆祝了过去二十年经济表现的大幅放缓，他将这部分归因于经济政策制定的改善。去年，一切都崩溃了。
It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal disputes. Thus, in a 2008 paper titled “The State of Macro” (that is, macroeconomics, the study of bigpicture issues like recessions), Olivier Blanchard of M.I.T., now the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, declared that “the state of macro is good.” The battles of yesteryear, he said, were over, and there had been a “broad convergence of vision.” And in the real world, economists believed they had things under control: the “central problem of depression-prevention has been solved,” declared Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago in his 2003 presidential address to the American Economic Association. In 2004, Ben Bernanke, a former Princeton professor who is now the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, celebrated the Great Moderation in economic performance over the previous two decades, which he attributed in part to improved economic policy making. Last year, everything came apart.