Drum vs. Cowen: Three Laws
Mother Jones
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Today Tyler Cowen published his version of Cowen’s Three Laws:
1. Cowen’s First Law: There is something wrong with everything (by which I mean there are few decisive or knockdown articles or arguments, and furthermore until you have found the major flaws in an argument, you do not understand it)
2. Cowen’s Second Law: There is a literature on everything.
3. Cowen’s Third Law: All propositions about real interest rates are wrong.
I’d phrase these somewhat differently:
1. Drum’s First Law: For any any problem complex enough to be interesting, there is evidence pointing in multiple directions. You will never find a case where literally every research result supports either liberal or conservative orthodoxy.
2. Drum’s Second Law: There’s literature on a lot of things, but with some surprising gaps. Furthermore, in many cases the literature is so contradictory and ambiguous as to be almost useless in practical terms.
3. Drum’s Third Law: Really? Isn’t there a correlation between real interest rates and future inflationary expectations? In general, don’t low real interest rates make capital investment more likely by lowering hurdle rates? Or am I just being naive here?
In any case, you can take your choice. Or mix and match!
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