Today on Uncommon Knowledge, Michael Boskin and Edward Lazear, both former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, on their own profession, economics. Listen to economists such as Lawrence Summers, once the president of Harvard, and now the director of the Obama administration’s National Economic Council, or Christina Romer, the current chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, and you could almost conclude that Milton Friedman had never been born and John Maynard Keynes had never died. Boskin and Lazear explain the enduring temptation of Keynesianism.

Edward Lazear: Despite the evidence of the past thirty to forty years, the economics profession decided during the crisis of 2008 that we were going to believe in the Keynesian model again because we needed something to work. Unfortunately, the shift to Keynesianism was based more on hope than on evidence.
Michael Boskin: The economic theory called the “new Keynesian view” stems from the political urge to do something.

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