I recently spent the greater part of a day writing a long point-by-point rebuttal to Tyler Cowen’s recent critique of my work. At the end, I decid

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2024-12-21 18:00:03

I recently spent the greater part of a day writing a long point-by-point rebuttal to Tyler Cowen’s recent critique of my work. At the end, I decided that this is the wrong approach. Arguments are rarely helpful. I need to write a post better explaining my approach to monetary economics.

It isn’t just Tyler, most economists who have bothered to look at my work don’t really understand what I’m doing. It’s only human to think, “Poor, poor pitiful me, always so misunderstood.” But many of these economists are clearly smarter than me. If I’m being widely misunderstood, that’s on me.

So I (metaphorically) tore up the post and decided to start over. This will be a bit long, so I’ll start with a few general guideposts. I hope that you’ll see that I actually am responding to Tyler—not so much point by point, rather by better explaining my approach.

Macroeconomic explanation is often possible (ex post), but the best explanations won’t even look like explanations to the average person, even the average economist. A “model” need not be a set of equations.