Mankiw vs Krugman

Greg Mankiw defends himself against (seemingly unjust) charges made by Paul Krugman.

Every Keynesian style defense I've read on the stimulus package, including the White House, confuses modeling with reality. Krugman, the central figure of this group, consistently determines the assumptions he makes about the economy are 100% true and infallible. This is an unbelievably arrogant and dishonest thing for someone as intelligent and influencial as Krugman to do. Mankiw writes:

I do not object to claims such as:
A: "Based on our models of the economy, we believe there would be X million fewer jobs today without the stimulus."

But it is absurd to suggest that you can say:
B: "We have measured how many jobs the stimulus has saved or created, and the number is X."

Economists are capable of making statements such as A, but it is beyond our ken to make statements such as B. Statement B is, of course, much stronger than statement A, as it purports to be based on data rather than on models. Unfortunately, we are hearing statements like B much too often from administration officials. A good example is here, where can you "learn" that 110,185.36 jobs have been created or saved in California alone.

Krugman is disguising politics as economics, and his pedigree is allowing him to get away with it. This is bad news for the discipline of economics.


UPDATE: Mario Rizzo weighs in over at Think Markets.