Now Stiglitz makes more trouble!

Brad De Long delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU
Thu Jan 27 12:20:16 PST 2000



>
> >
> What should we glean from this? Are Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence
>Summers really on the same page after all? Doesn't this compress - to put it
>mildly - the significant, some might say radical differences between those
>two public servants?

Stiglitz has never seen a market that could not be improved by a suitable Stiglitz-designed regulatory policy. Summers is much more frightened of government failure--much more likely to think that only the old nation states of western Europe (and even they have blown their unemployment policy) and the new national states of the Pacific rim can successfully carry out "developmental state" policies. Larry is much more inclined to put energy toward stamping out policies that artificially encourage short-term capital inflows. Joe is much more inclined to put energy toward designing policies that discourage short-term capital inflows.

But their analytical positions are closer to each other than either is to, say, Anne Krueger...

What worries me at the moment, however, is that the left wing calling for a kinder, gentler, larger IMF is shrinking fast while the right wing calling for abolition of the IMF and no support at all for emerging market economies in financial crises is gaining strength...

Brad DeLong



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