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In his impetuous missive “Economics is Hard. Don’t Let Bloggers Tell You Otherwise” Richmond Fed researcher Kartik Athreya goes after the economics blogging community like a blindfolded kid batting a piñata full of hornets and received a series of predictably stinging responses. Presenting his own views and not those of his employer, he argued that bloggers practicing economics without a license have sent millions of unsuspecting economics consumers to hell in a hand basket of “incoherent or misleading” advice.
Athreya wants us to believe that a PhD in economics is an effective prophylactic against consumer quality violations. But the argument is a tough sell after a decade of economic booms and busts that taught the American public the hard way that accreditation offers no measure of protection to consumers of the output of professional economic analysts. Quite the opposite.
In fact, the failures and foibles of the macroeconomics profession created the market for economics bloggers in the first place. More …