Més Barro

Entrevista al professor Barro.

Fragments:

Sobre els plans d'augment de la despesa pública als Estats Units:

"I mean democrats were waiting with all these ridiculous projects, and now they've got an excuse to bring it through politically."

Sobre Paul Krugman, líder intel·lectual de l'esquerra nord-americana i economista en el temps que li queda lliure:

"the guy has never done any work in Keynesian macroeconomics, which I actually did. He has never even done any work on that. His work is in trade stuff. He did excellent work, but it has nothing to do with what he's writing about."

I sobre la majoria d'economistes que prediquen les bondats de l'estímul públic:

"Most economists haven't really been thinking about this issue, they haven't really focused on it. It's not their specialty. Most economists today, they haven't really been thinking about this kind of multiplier issue. Which goes back to that first question you asked about how come now we're so worried about this. I don't think most economists are focused on this, or that they're familiar with the empirical evidence. I don't think they've really worked on the theory. So I don't know, maybe they have some opinion that they got from graduate school or something. "

Ja veuen que el professor Barro no està gaire content amb el soroll mediàtic i polític que se sent als Estats Units (provocat moltes vegades pels mateixos economistes) al voltant de la resposta del govern a la crisi. Tinc curiositat per saber què pensaria el professor si obrís algun dia la premsa espanyola i llegís, per exemple, els diagnòstics i prescripcions amb què ens obsequien freqüentment experts de la talla de Lluís Foix o Alfredo Abián.