Greg Mankiw: Fun with Statistics
Chicago economist Casey Mulligan says Republican Presidents are better for economic equality between men and women.
My take: These articles are completely persuasive, as long as you buy into the axiom that correlation=causation. Otherwise, not so much.
I have Blinder's book but haven't read it yet. I'm suspicious for two reasons. First is the convenient release in the middle of an election year. Second, I've played with data of this type in the past, trying to find patterns connected with who holds the White House or controls Congress. I've seen other studies done and critiqued, and the analysis rarely holds up under scrutiny.
Blinder's book analyzes presidencies since World War II. He notes that the Carter Administration is the only Democrat administration that doesn't meet his decreasing inequality and higher economic growth pattern. That means we have one data point for the Democrats over the last forty years (Clinton)! The American and world economy has changed enormously during that forty-year era. Clinton inherited an economy that had just come out of a mild recession and began to inherit some of the peace dividend from the fall of the Soviet Union. He did pass NAFTA (with the aid of the Republicans), and then his administration ended just as the dot.com bubble burst. The timing ranged from an economic low in the business cycle at the start to an economic high at the end.
I look forward to reading the book, but I'm skeptical of these studies.
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