PIMCO quotes Minsky

Bradford DeLong jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu
Wed Jul 10 11:17:12 PDT 2002



>Bradford DeLong wrote:
>
>>But this is low Keynesianism: the paradox of thrift; the fallacy of
>>composition; et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...
>
>Actaully, how often is Minsky cited in the AER? JEP? Journal of Finance?
>
>Doug

Well, Ben Bernanke and Mark Gertler have made their careers on what I interpret as teched-up Minskyism (albeit without citing him, or without citing him much). But that's not a unique sin: I remember once cornering Stiglitz and asking him why his efficiency-wage stuff didn't cite Bowles (whose earlier efficiency-wage stuff was expressly put forward as a formalization of Marx's "reserve army of the unemployed"; he seemed not the most comfortable of campers).

And, by coincidence, open on my desk right now is Michael D. Bordo and Olivier Jeanne (2002), "Boom-Busts in Asset Prices, Monetary Instability, and Monetary Policy" (Cambridge: NBER Working Paper 8966, June). It's High Minskyism. Let me look at the reference list... Nope. But also open on my desk is Charles Kindleberger (1978), _Manias, Panics, and Crashes_, which does cite Minsky up the wazoo and explicitly adopts Minskyism as the analytical framework underlying Kindleberger's narrative... and everyone cites Kindleberger.

So the ideas are there: stripped of reference to their source, with their serial numbers filed off, repainted, and with a forged certificate of origin attached; but the ideas are there.

Brad DeLong



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