Today Truman Bewley comes to GMU. I’ve been singing his praises for years; while Bill Dickens is the man who taught me to see to the grave evil of unemployment, Bewley’s the man who taught me in great detail how this grave evil endures. His psychologically- and sociologically-rich labor economics is a major inspiration to me, especially my forthcoming book on the economics of education. Here’s me channeling Bewley. Here’s what Bewley learned while writing his masterpiece, Why Wages Don’t Fall During a Recession. Here’s what anti-Keynesians must learn from Bewley.
Many economists, especially nowadays, will be baffled by Bewley’s thoughtful employer interviews. Where’s the identification? Where’s the calibration? The problem is theirs, not his. Like every man of good sense, Bewley looks for his car keys where he dropped them. His goal is to help us answer questions we care about, not convince us to care about whatever questions he can decisively answer.
As usual, I’ll be live-tweeting Bewley’s seminar under the hashtag #PCSem.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Sep 14 2016 at 8:24am
I am looking forward to attending this seminar very much
Tell the other libertarians
Sep 14 2016 at 8:49pm
If some libertarians appreciate work like Bewley’s, why do the loudest libertarians (Brennan, Magness) keep spewing anti-economic nonsense on the adjunct pay issue without any formal correction? (See their recent “thought experiments” to determine the “marginal value” of adjuncts at the BHL blog. You would think they never met anyone who worked in economics.)
Don’t other libertarians care about how the view comes off to serious people?
Phil Magness
Sep 19 2016 at 3:21pm
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