Forget about introducing a novel ‘friction’ in a DSGE model. Pick up a paper that has had great political influence and proceed to ‘trash’ it!
Thomas Hendon has started a ‘new wave’:
Before he turned in his report, Herndon repeatedly e-mailed Reinhart and Rogoff to get their data set, so he could compare it to his own work. But because he was a lowly graduate student asking favors of some of the most respected economists in the world, he got no reply, until one afternoon, when he was sitting on his girlfriend’s couch.
“I checked my e-mail, and saw that I had received a reply from Carmen Reinhart,” he says. “She said she didn’t have time to look into my query, but that here was the data, and I should feel free to publish whatever results I found.”
Herndon pulled up an Excel spreadsheet containing Reinhart’s data and quickly spotted something that looked odd.
“I clicked on cell L51, and saw that they had only averaged rows 30 through 44, instead of rows 30 through 49.”
I bet that from now on ‘busy’ researchers will find the time to carefully consider the ‘queries’ of ‘lowly graduate students’!
HT Rodrigo Nunes
Incredible.
But if you are an MM’er, the results are not surprising.
What counts is monetary policy. Fiscal policy can do some harm, but not much good.