That last expression -- policy entrepreneurs -- now that triggers certain memories... Ah, yes...! That expression cropped up in an article in the September-October 1996 issue of the American Prospect -- the magazine that runs Tapped -- by its founder and co-editor Robert Kuttner. In that article, Kuttner excoriated Paul Krugman -- that's right... small world isn't it? -- for (among many other things) Krugman's attacks on "Lester Thurow, Robert Reich, and Laura Tyson, whom he dismisses as pseudo-economists and mere 'policy entrepreneurs.' On close examination, his disdain is often less about serious policy differences than about membership in the right disciplinary club."

You see, the problem is that, to Krugman, Kuttner is just a "mere 'policy entrepreneur'" too, because Kuttner doesn't have a Ph.D. -- at least not a real one, and not in economics. And either does Robert Reich -- Kuttner's close friend and co-founder at The American Prospect (as well as Secretary of Labor under Clinton).

There's simply no question but that Kuttner holds himself out publicly as an economist (and by any reasonable definition, he is an economist). His bio on the Prospect site says he writes articles "often focusing on domestic and international economic policy" and that he "was the longtime economics editor of The New Republic." It lists his five books, four of which are on economics. And Kuttner writes for the Economic Viewpoint column of Business Week, whose editor said of him and his fellow columnists, "Covering economics is an important mission, and we know that you, our readers, are counting on us to maintain an honorable tradition."

Tradition? What a choice of words! According to Tapped, "traditionally, you don't get to call yourself an economist without that sheepskin."

Kuttner's Prospect bio makes it fairly clear that he doesn't have that traditional sheepskin. "He was educated at Oberlin College, the University of California at Berkeley and the London School of Economics. He has an honorary doctorate from Swarthmore College." His bio at the Leigh Speakers Bureau is even plainer: "Kuttner studied at the London School of Economics and received degrees from Oberlin College and the University of California at Berkeley." Kuttner's office didn't return my call asking for confirmation.

Yep -- Tapped sure embarrassed the boss by lumping him in with the political hacks and the policy entrepreneurs. And what's so hilarious about it is that Kuttner has gone to such lengths to defend the sheepskin-free zone at The American Prospect from Krugman's credentialist vision, which he describes as "a Manichaean world in which there are two kinds of economists--'the professors and the policy entrepreneurs.'" Well, at least Krugman admits there are two kinds of economists -- Tapped will only let one kind past the velvet ropes.

It's too bad that the loose cannons at Tapped have given Krugman the satisfaction of seeing Kuttner's own staff take Krugman's side. Kuttner's article on Krugman was an extraordinarily powerful and effective debunking, one of the best I've ever read and one of the earliest -- it predicted brilliantly what would happen to Krugman as he sank deeper and deeper into media-whoredom. And is sparked a deeply acrimonious debate between the two men.

First came a splendid counterstroke from Krugman in Slate, in which he gave Kuttner and Reich and all the other uncredentialed economists the snub of all snubs, delivered with a typically Krugmanian devastating metaphor:

"...there are people like Kuttner, Jeff Faux of the Economic Policy Institute, and Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Some members of this faction have held university appointments. But most of them lack academic credentials and, more important, they are basically hostile to the kind of economics on which such credentials are based.

"A strong desire to make economics less like a science and more like literary criticism is a surprisingly common attribute of anti-academic writers on the subject. ...Academic economics, the stuff that is in the textbooks, is largely based on mathematical reasoning. ...Kuttner and [James K.] Galbraith know that the quantitative, algebraic reasoning that lies behind modern economics is very difficult to challenge on its own ground. To oppose it they must invoke alternative standards of intellectual authority and legitimacy. In effect, they are saying, 'You have Paul Samuelson on your team? Well, we've got Jacques Derrida on ours.'"

That was followed by a Kuttner/Krugman debate in the next issue of The American Prospect. It was pretty silly stuff, with the battlin' liberals slugging it out over such defining issues as which one of them was most disdained by the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. But I'd say Kuttner got the best of it, especially when it came to defending non-academic economists:

"Krugman insists that people like me are suspect because we practice economics without a license. Yet Krugman thinks nothing of practicing political science without a license (not to mention practicing journalism without reporting). There is a good reason why economics used be called political economy. Nearly all the difficult economic issues are not just questions of the efficient allocation of scarce resources by the price system in an institutional vacuum, but profoundly political issues involving property rights, ground rules, and strategies to deal with market failures that can only be settled by recourse to values and to politics."

It's good reading, even if having these two liberals slug it out is pretty much like putting a mirror in a little bowl containing a single Siamese fighting fish. I guess it's a case of what Freud called "the narcissism of small differences." And when it gets to these guys -- especially Krugman and Reich -- those differences can get downright Lilliputian.

Thanks to Dave Nadig and Mike Lion for invaluable research help.

Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:10 AM | link    

Thursday, February 27, 2003