I first became familiar with Professor Gregory Mankiw while I was at Michigan. I and many other economist wannabe at Michigan used his book during our macroeconomics classes. He of course became publicly prominent when he served the Council of Economic Advisers. He became more prominent (well, infamous really but that depends on your point of view; really, the point of view of most Americans at that time was increasingly protectionist) when he expressed support for outsourcing. In Friedman’s The World is Flat:
During the 2004 election campaign we saw the Democrats debating whether NAFTA was a good idea and the Bush White House putting duct tape over the mouth of N. Gregory Mankiw, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and stashing him away in Dick Cheney’s basement, because Mankiw, author of a popular college economics textbook, had dared to speak approvingly of outsourcing as just the “latest manifestation of the gains from trade that economists have talked about at least since Adam Smith.”
Mankiw’s statement triggered a competition for who could say the most ridiculous thing in response. The winner was speaker of the house Dennis Hastert, who said that Mankiw’s “theory fails a basic test of real economics.” And what test was that, Dennis? Poor Mankiw was barely heard from again.
Also, the Big Mac controversy.
When I first found out that Prof. Mankiw blogs, I became his regular reader.
Last Friday, I asked him are you a libertarian. The next day, he answered yes.
Sweet.
2 replies on “[935] Of Greg Mankiw is a libertarian!”
[…] hell, what the heck. He responded to my query earlier and I am hoping that he would respond to this one too. One of my favorite […]
My prof. used Mankiw’s textbook last summer for macro class instead of her favourite choice, Krugman’s text. And from there, my interest on this from Harvard’s guy increased and I started to follow his blog.
Well done Bro.
You are truly libertarian :)