| Causes and solutions on unemployment | Refers only to | |
| Myself | Taxes & the Trias Politica structure | Phelps (1994) |
| Krugman | We don’t know | Phelps 1967-70 |
| Ormerod | Moral values & collective responsibility | |
| Phelps | Subtle combination of turnover costs etcetera | |
| H&M | Lack of a positive ‘vision’ of the public sector | Phelps 1967 |
At a lower level, when we look into details, then there are more points of overlap. An analysis of a practical economic problem (in this case unemployment) of course must have an econometric substratum in order to be taken seriously. Table 19 contains three technical issues, the shift of the Phillipscurve and the influence of technology and globalisation in the model. Here economics would advance if the authors could convince each other (allow me to add: of my analysis).
It also appears that some of the differences originate from the styles of analysis, which styles also have to do with roots. Ormerod, Phelps and myself have econometric roots, Krugman’s first love was history (see Krugman (1993)), and Heilbroner is clearly a literary economist (‘though’ summa cum laude, Harvard 1940). (I don’t know about Milberg.) It is important to identify these styles.
I like to use econometrics in the way Jan Tinbergen did. It should be technically sound, but not fancy for reasons of its own; it should be relevant for a serious problem, and communicated to the general public in a responsible, modest but still clear manner (even if clarity makes it sound immodest). I also am very much interested in philosophical aspects (what H&M calls the ‘vision thing’), which however is not quite the style of Tinbergen. It appears that the various authors do not share all these qualities in the same degree. Taking these criteria to classify the four authors and myself gives Table 19. The names in the table are in alphabetical order. Actually, Table 19 summarises the discussion below.
Table 19: Comparing on style and content
| Yes (comparable to me) | No (not so) | |
| econometric roots | Ormerod, Phelps | Heilbroner, Krugman |
| technically (fairly) sound | Krugman, Ormerod, Phelps | Heilbroner |
| modest & clear | Krugman | H&M, Ormerod, Phelps |
| the vision thing | H&M, Ormerod | Krugman, Phelps |
| technology isn’t the cause | Krugman,[120] Phelps | H&M, Ormerod |
| globalisation isn’t the cause | Krugman | H&M, Ormerod (Phelps ?) |
| uses a shift of the Phillipscurve | H&M, Ormerod, Phelps | (Krugman ?) |
Krugman: “We don’t know”
The world should be very grateful to Paul Krugman for explaining economic essentials, and not only for these explanations themselves but for his choice of words as well. Krugman’s writing are a display of fact & logic and scientific argument and humour & good will: a quality blend that one hardly ever sees. I can only presume that you have read these books, [121] and then continue my line of reasoning.
My thesis differs from Krugman’s in one major respect. He claims that “we don’t know” about the causes of the productivity slowdown - whereas I claim that ‘we’ do. [122]
The following Krugman quotes are useful - and testify of his intellectual honesty: