Discredited frauds Reinhart and Rogoff lash out at Paul Krugman

[marmar]

via truthdig:



Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, the Harvard economists whose influential pro-austerity study was recently exposed as being seriously flawed, have penned a scathing open letter to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, a major critic of their work and one of the leading voices in the anti-austerity movement. In the long-winded letter posted to Reinhart’s website Saturday, the pair accuse the Nobel Prize-winning economist of “uncivil behavior” and criticize him for being “selective and shallow” in his characterization of their research.

“We admire your past scholarly work, which influences us to this day,” the letter reads. “So it has been with deep disappointment that we have experienced your spectacularly uncivil behavior the past few weeks. You have attacked us in very personal terms, virtually non-stop, in your New York Times column and blog posts. Now you have doubled down in the New York Review of Books, adding the accusation we didn’t share our data. Your characterization of our work and of our policy impact is selective and shallow. It is deeply misleading about where we stand on the issues. And we would respectfully submit, your logic and evidence on the policy substance is not nearly as compelling as you imply.”

They continue: “You particularly take aim at our 2010 paper on the long-term secular association between high debt and slow growth. That you disagree with our interpretation of the results is your prerogative. Your thoroughly ignoring the subsequent literature, however, including the International Monetary Fund’s work as well as our own deeper and more complete 2012 paper with Vincent Reinhart, is troubling. Perhaps, acknowledging the updated literature—not to mention decades of theoretical, empirical, and historical contributions on drawbacks to high debt—would inconveniently undermine your attempt to make us a scapegoat for austerity. You write ‘Indeed, Reinhart-Rogoff may have had more immediate influence on public debate than any previous paper in the history of economics.’ ” ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/economists_behind_discredited_austerity_study_lash_out_at_paul_krugman_2013/

[DJ13]

1. I think Krugman has already replied

May 26, 2013, 5:51 pm
It’s The Policy, Stupid

May 26, 2013, 10:16 am
Macroeconomic Hippie-Punching

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

[randome]

2. The more they whine, the more they discredit themselves.

Amateurs.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[iemitsu]

3. Sounds to me like charlatans, trying to save what they can of their own reputations,

not like evidence that they were right or that their errors have been mis-characterized. "oh Krugman, you neglect to look at the work based on our flawed model and how it supports our ideas", cry the two discredited shills.
I hope they are dismissed from Harvard.

[chervilant]

4. Sounds like

they need a little cheese with that whine...

[DonCoquixote]

5. a perfect quote

"The patient reader who will wade through your preemptive hippie-bashing to get to the good stuff is a myth — just as much a myth as the reasonable centrist who can be won over by hippie-bashing in the first place."

[Scuba]

6. "Exposing our stupidity/complicity in ruining the lives of millions was mean of you."

[bemildred]

7. Science is not about being civil, it's about basing your argument on evidence.

And refuting someone elses balderdash is not uncivil, it is a duty.