EXPRESSING your own views is challenging enough. Describing someone else’s opinions without talking to them first opens the door to serious trouble.
I took that risk in a recent column about the two new Nobel laureates in economics, Christopher A. Sims of Princeton and Thomas J. Sargent of New York University. They received their awards for a lifetime of theoretical and statistical work on the cause-and-effect relationship between government policies and the economy. These are immensely complicated matters, and neither man is accustomed to boiling down his opinions into bite-sized morsels.
Professor Sims told me that some conservative commentators had gotten his views quite wrong. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, for example, implied that both professors opposed the interventionist economic policies of central banks and governments over the last few years.
Professor Sims said he actually approved of many of them — with qualifications, of course. An op-ed article, also in The Journal that day, called the pair “non-Keynesian,” a reference to the late British economist John Maynard Keynes. Professor Sims said he was not “non-Keynesian” at all.
When I talked to Professor Sims earlier this month, he wouldn’t speak for his colleague Professor Sargent (and I couldn’t reach him). Based on his voluminous published work, I wrote that Professor Sargent didn’t seem to belong in the noninterventionist camp to which he had been consigned. But I was going out on a limb.
It turns out that in some respects, I didn’t go far enough.
In telephone conversations last week, Professor Sargent said he felt insulted by people who call him “non-Keynesian” or “right wing,” terms that, he said, are based on a misunderstanding of his thinking. And he rejected attempts to categorize his views in simple slogans.
EXPRESSING your own views is challenging enough. Describing someone else’s opinions without talking to them first opens the door to serious trouble.I took that risk in a recent column about the two new Nobel laureates in economics, Christopher A. Sims of Princeton and Thomas J. Sargent of New York University. They received their awards for a lifetime of theoretical and statistical work on the cause-and-effect relationship between government policies and the economy. These are immensely complicated matters, and neither man is accustomed to boiling down his opinions into bite-sized morsels.Professor Sims told me that some conservative commentators had gotten his views quite wrong. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, for example, implied that both professors opposed the interventionist economic policies of central banks and governments over the last few years.Professor Sims said he actually approved of many of them — with qualifications, of course. An op-ed article, also in The Journal that day, called the pair “non-Keynesian,” a reference to the late British economist John Maynard Keynes. Professor Sims said he was not “non-Keynesian” at all.When I talked to Professor Sims earlier this month, he wouldn’t speak for his colleague Professor Sargent (and I couldn’t reach him). Based on his voluminous published work, I wrote that Professor Sargent didn’t seem to belong in the noninterventionist camp to which he had been consigned. But I was going out on a limb.It turns out that in some respects, I didn’t go far enough.In telephone conversations last week, Professor Sargent said he felt insulted by people who call him “non-Keynesian” or “right wing,” terms that, he said, are based on a misunderstanding of his thinking. And he rejected attempts to categorize his views in simple slogans.
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