Thursday, December 25, 2008

Fiscal stimulus skeptics

Greg Mankiw had a post a while back that quoted part of an AP story identifying him as the only skeptic of a planned massive Obama stimulus package. He then followed up with a couple of other posts. There are, of course, many more skeptics than Mankiw. Skepticism seems in order partly because the evidence is that the Keynesian multiplier is low, and even more because of public-choice considerations, some of which are discussed in a Wall Street Journal commentary. For me the highlight of this commentary was its discussion of feedback, the possibility that bad economic results lead to bad policy, leading to even worse results.

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