QED: QE3

This is the title of a new column at VoxEU.org by Marco Annunziata. Annunziata argues that the U.S. Fed's announcement of a third round of quantitative easing is unlikely to work. Investment and hiring are held back by huge uncertainty over the long-term outlook and the stimulus provides a monetary bridge over the election gap but little more.

The Fed has recently launched an extremely aggressive stance:

• As signalled in the last released FOMC minutes and in Bernanke’s Jackson Hole speech, the Fed recently launched QE3, its third attempt to boost growth and employment via asset purchases. It will buy US$40 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) a month.
• It confirmed that Operation Twist (extension of maturities held in its portfolio) will be extended though the end of this year.
• In addition, the Fed has extended its forward guidance, indicating it now expects interest rates to remain exceptionally low at least through mid-2015.
• Even more importantly, the Fed now “expects that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy will remain appropriate for a considerable time after the economic recovery strengthens”.
• Finally, the statement opens the door to continuing MBS purchases, launching new purchases of other assets (such as US Treasuries), and deploying “other policy tools” until they can achieve a substantial improvement in the labour market outlook in a context of price stability.

Annunziats writes,

The Fed sets its sights straight on the labour market, and stays true to its mantra that there has been no change in the US’ natural rate of unemployment. The statement that the Fed “expects that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy will remain appropriate for a considerable time after the economic recovery strengthens” sounds at first like an oxymoron. Once the recovery strengthens, there should be no need to maintain an extraordinary degree of monetary accommodation. But the Fed projects that in 2014, with GDP growth running a full percentage point above potential, unemployment will be barely lower than it is now, and only in 2015 it will get closer to 7%.

and continues,

In a recent Vox column Calvo et al. (2012) make a strong case that a persistently higher rate of unemployment might reflect the nature of the financial crisis rather than a higher natural rate of unemployment, and that monetary policy can therefore help bring it back to pre-crisis levels. Their prescription, however, is that the Fed should act in coordination with the Treasury to remove toxic assets and bolster the stock of safe assets; a strategy with a strong structural component, which seems to me absent from the Fed’s current approach.

Investment and hiring are held back by uncertainty over the fiscal picture, which is compounded by the political uncertainty of the November elections. And the uncertainty is substantial for two reasons. First, Republicans and Democrats are on very divergent positions, to the point that the presidential election is being cast as a referendum on small versus big government. Second, the underlying fiscal challenge is substantial; just look at the Congressional Budget Office’s scenarios. Liquidity is not the problem, and more liquidity is unlikely to be the solution. For now, it’s the best we get, and in the short term, it is better than the disappointment we could have seen after the Fed had raised expectations. But we know from the movies that sequels can often have diminishing returns. I think that is even truer for QE.

In which I agree with Steven Joyce

Sad but true. From the NBR,

“There's no doubt about that, and there's never been an exporter that doesn’t want to lower exchange rate, no matter what level” he said.

Mr Joyce said that the dollar “may” hit parity with the US dollar.

“But that'll be because the US is completely in the toilet,” he said.

“Ultimately it's market fundamentals.

“And so ultimately nobody's going to bid the New Zealand dollar beyond what they consider it should be at.

“Now even if it bounced through say for example the quantitative easing that's coming through at the moment, it will come back again.

“Because fundamentally the value of the New Zealand dollar is determined by what the world believes is the future of the New Zealand economy, and if they bid it up too high, then they will look at it and say well actually we've bid it up too high, and we'll bid it down again.”

He's basically right. And when will we get over the mercantilist obsession with exporting that underlies the 'dollar must be lower to help exporters' arguments?

The NBR goes on,

Mr Joyce said the private members bill being introduced by Winston Peters to alter the Reserve Bank’s objectives was a “snake oil solution that would achieve nothing.”

Actually it may achieve something, but it would be all bad.

And,

Mr Peters wants the primary function of the Reserve Bank to be broadened to include other critical macro-economic factors such as the rate of growth and export growth.

So given you need as many instruments as objectives but new instruments is Winston going to give the Reserve Bank?

For more on why Winston's idea is 'snake oil' see TVHE and Anti-Dismal.

Monopoly and tariffs are costly

If you didn't already know.

James A. Schmitz, Jr. takes a look at the New and Larger Costs of Monopoly and Tariffs. The abstract of the paper reads:

Fifty-eight years ago, Harberger (1954) estimated that the costs of monopoly, which resulted from misallocation of resources across industries, were trivial. Others showed that the same was true for tariffs. This research soon led to the consensus that monopoly costs are of little significance—a consensus that persists to this day.

This paper reports on a new literature that takes a different approach to the costs of monopoly. It examines the costs of monopoly and tariffs within industries. In particular, it examines the histories of industries in which a monopoly is destroyed (or tariffs greatly reduced) and the industry transitions quickly from monopoly to competition. If there are costs of monopoly and high tariffs within industries, it should be possible to see those costs whittled away as the monopoly is destroyed.

In contrast to the prevailing consensus, this new research has identified significant costs of monopoly. Monopoly (and high tariffs) is shown to significantly lower productivity within establishments. It also leads to misallocation within industries: Resources are transferred from high- to low-productivity establishments.

From these histories, a common theme (or theory) emerges as to why monopoly is costly. When a monopoly is created, “rents” are created. Conflict emerges among shareholders, managers and employees of the monopoly as they negotiate how to divide these rents. Mechanisms are set up to split the rents. These mechanisms are often means to reduce competition among members of the monopoly. Although the mechanisms divide rents, they also destroy them (by leading to low productivity and misallocation).

Recently, a new literature has been developing that looks within industries to try and estimate the cost of monopolies and tariffs. This literature examines the histories of industries in which a monopoly is destroyed and the industry transitions quickly from monopoly to competition, as well as the histories of industries that rapidly moved the opposite way, from competition to monopoly. The notion being that if there are costs of monopoly, those costs should be destroyed when the monopoly is destroyed. Similarly, when an industry is monopolised, costs should be created. In both cases, costs should be apparent when comparing the industry before and after monopolisation.

Industries in the U.S., such as transportation and the manufacturing of sugar, iron ore and cement, have been studied utilising the new approach. The historical records of these industries show that there are costs of monopoly and tariffs within industries. The studies have shown that monopoly led to, among other costs, the following:

1. Low productivity at each factory. That is, for any given amount of inputs, monopoly meant that less output was produced than under competition.

2. Misallocation of resources between high- and low-productivity factories. That is, monopoly led to resources (capital, labor, etc.) being transferred from productive factories to unproductive factories. Again, this misallocation occurs within an industry and is different from the misallocation that Harberger considered.

These findings are interesting since in standard monopoly theory productive efficiency is maintained while the deadweight loss of monopoly comes from allocative inefficiency.

When measured it is found that

[i]n sharp contrast to Harberger’s finding, [ ... ] the welfare costs associated with monopoly and tariffs are not small. The consequence of cases (1) and (2) above is that industry output could have been produced with fewer inputs. One way to measure the loss, then, is to calculate the value of the “wasted” inputs. The histories of these industries show that as monopoly was destroyed in each, productivity at each factory soared. Doubling of productivities in a few years was common. The value of the wasted inputs was as much as 20 percent to 30 percent of industry value added.

An externality of capitalism?

Who knew there is a link between capitalism and exorcism? Not me!

“The rise in the number or exorcists from four to more than 120 over the course of 15 years in Poland is telling,” Father Aleksander Posacki, a professor of philosophy, theology and leading demonologist and exorcist told reporters in Warsaw at the Monday launch of the Egzorcysta monthly.

Ironically, he attributed the rise in demonic possessions in what remains one of Europe’s most devoutly Catholic nations partly to the switch from atheist communism to free market capitalism in 1989.

“It’s indirectly due to changes in the system: capitalism creates more opportunities to do business in the area of occultism. Fortune telling has even been categorised as employment for taxation,” Posacki told AFP.

“If people can make money out of it, naturally it grows and its spiritual harm grows too,” he said, hastening to add authentic exorcism is absolutely free of charge.

Timing is everything: fiscal consolidation during depression

From VoxEU.org comes this short audio in which John Van Reenen talks to Viv Davies about fiscal consolidation during a depression. They discuss Van Reenen's recent work on quantifying the costs and benefits of delaying austerity measures until recovery is clearly established. They also discuss whether austerity has gone to far. Van Reenen presents the case for a more federal Europe.

Compare this with the previous posting.

Do sharp reductions of deficits and government debts cause large output losses?

This is a question that is being asked in many countries around the world. This is because at some point many countries will have to reduce their public debts. What is the best way to do this?

According to a new working paper, The output effect of fiscal consolidations by Alberto Alesina, Carlo Favero and Francesco Giavazzi what matters crucially is how the consolidation occurs:

Fiscal adjustments based upon spending cuts are much less costly in terms of output losses than taxbased ones. In particular, spending-based adjustments have been associated with mild and short-lived recessions, in many cases with no recession at all. Instead, tax-based adjustments have been followed but prolonged and deep recessions. The difference is remarkable in its size and cannot be explained by different monetary policies during the two type of adjustments. In fact, we find that the mild asymmetric (and lagged) response of short-term rates cannot explain the difference between the two types of adjustments: heterogeneity in the response of monetary policy appears with a lag of one to two years, while the heterogenous response of output growth to EB and TB adjustments is immediate. We find that the heterogeneity in the effects of the two types of fiscal adjustment (tax-based and spending-based) is mainly due to the response of private investment, rather than that to consumption growth. Interestingly, the responses of business and consumers’ confidence to different types of fiscal adjustment show the same asymmetry as investment and consumption: business confidence (unlike consumer confidence) picks up immediately after expenditure-based adjustments.

Thus fiscal consolidations tend to have much more favourable effects on the economy if they are done via spending cuts alone, not via increased taxation.

Advice to young Austrians

From George Selgin and thus well worth thinking hard about:

Here it is: search for the word "Austrian" in your research papers, delete it, and rewrite where necessary. Next ask yourself whether what's left can stand on its own merits. Would your fellow Austrians find it interesting and persuasive without the help of all the winking, nodding, and fraternal handshaking aimed at declaring yourself one of the team, and at thereby evading friendly fire? Would they find the conclusions firmly attached by a series of solid links to some indisputable premises, as they should if you are really a competent praxeologist? Are they likely to find the evidence you supply persuasive, should you be so bold as to offer such? Would they, in short, find merit in what you've written even if they had no reason to suspect that you are one of the gang, or even a fellow traveler? If not, then your paper is good for nothing but joining a club that is, face it, all too willing to have you as a member.

But being able to win over Austrians without declaring yourself one of them is the least of it. The more important question you need to ask is, "Can my stealth-Austrian paper not only sneak past mainstream radars, but do some persuading once across enemy lines?" It surely will not be less persuasive than it would be with all that Austrian flag-waving, since the flags might as well be bright red so far as the rest of the profession is concerned. But if it still can't persuade at least some persons who aren't pals of yours at the Mises Institute or at GMU or at some other Austrian hang-out, what good is it?

Persuading non-Austrian economists with what are, in substance, "Austrian"-style arguments is, admittedly, rough going: all too many so-called economists today are mere technicians who care only for the latest mathematical and statistical gimmicks, and give not a jot for genuine economics. But there are thank goodness also plenty of real economists who aren't Austrians and who don't want to hear about Austrian economics, but are willing to hear any good argument and to be persuaded by it and by evidence that seems to support it. Persuading them is hard too. It's also every economist's job.

I'm not sure just how true this is today "many so-called economists today are mere technicians who care only for the latest mathematical and statistical gimmicks". Once I think it was true but since the 70s the approach to doing economics by most economists has been changing. Less of the maths for maths sake and more of, what Selgin calls, "genuine economics". As an example I have written the following in a working paper on the theory of the firm:

A final point about the models of the firm discussed in this essay is that they highlight a general issue to do with post-1970 microeconomics, that is, the retreat from the use of general equilibrium (GE) models. All the models considered above are partial equilibrium models, but in this regard the theory of the firm is no different from most of the microeconomic theory developed since the 1970s. Microeconomics such as incentive theory, incomplete contract theory, game theory, industrial organisation etc, has largely turned its back, presumably temporarily, on GE theory and has worked almost exclusively within a partial equilibrium framework.

An idea I like

From Eric Crampton at Offsetting Behaviour

And it's the reason that the New Zealand Economic Association really really needs an annual awards ceremony for the worst piece of economic consultancy work produced in the country every year.

I trust that the President of the New Zealand Association of Economists will take the idea on-board and see that the award is implemented. May be BERL could back the award with money for the prize.

The BERL/NZ First report on the PTA (updated)

Matt Nolan has a piece up at the Infometrics website on Not a time to muddy the water: a rebuttal to the BERL/NZ First report on the PTA Matt writes,

Sifting through the report, BERL and NZ First's recommendation to scrap inflation targeting is based on a fear of "hot money". As they say, between 2002 and 2007, New Zealand saw a significant lift in private borrowing, much of which was sourced from overseas. They state that the lift in foreign lending was due to the higher interest rates in New Zealand.

However, this is only part of the story - a loan only appears when there is both a lender and a borrower. To understand the sharp increase in private debt levels, we need to ask what was driving up private sector demand for credit during this period. When we approach the issue in this way, we can recognise that the demand for credit was not the fault of interest rates being "too high".

As the Reserve Bank and, more recently, the NZIER have stated, the key issue in New Zealand over the past 40 years has been the high real exchange rate (the exchange rate adjusting for changes in prices between countries). Our persistent current account deficits and high level of net liabilities indicate that there is a significant issue in the New Zealand economy that needs to be addressed - but this is not a consequence of the PTA, inflation targeting, or interest rate setting.

The purpose of inflation targeting is to help wage and price setters set expectations of what will happen to the price of goods and services over time. The Reserve Bank controls inflation by announcing its target and adjusting the official cash rate in a way that is consistent with changes in saving and investment behaviour within the economy. The reason interest rates have had to be higher in New Zealand is due to the economic fundamentals that have driven up debt - blaming the Reserve Bank involves getting the explanation the wrong way around!

I note that in the BERL/NZ First report they say

The present Act’s primary function of controlling rising price inflation was critical when it was enacted in 1989. The world has since successfully beaten inflation. Therefore the Act is redundant.

Let us assume, for the sake of the argument, that the world has in fact beaten inflation. But so what? It may have beaten inflation now but what about the future? Isn't the point of the RB's focus on inflation that it remains beaten and we don't get any future periods of inflation?

The BERL/NZ Frist report goes on to say,

To grow the economy, the Reserve Bank actions could be used to encourage efficient production of more goods and services. This will ensure our businesses and workers are world-competitive.

How can the RB make firms efficient? What can the bank do to encourage efficient production? What does "ensure our businesses and workers are world-competitive" mean and why do we want it? This looks like more of the mercantilist "exports good, imports bad" line of (non)thinking.

Tellingly there is also no indication in the report as to how the RB's function should be changed. But it must be changed and these unknown changes would, apparently,  have great benefits for New Zealand.

Matt Nolan has additional comments on the report at the TVHE blog under the title BERL report on changing the PTA.

Update: Eric Crampton also comments here. The ODT has an article here.

Incentives matter: fuel economy file

The incentive effects of fuel-economy rules can be perverse.

The incentives to carmakers can also be weird. The original standards for fuel economy in the 1970s exempted light trucks, which were a small share of the market. That decision was critical to the explosive growth of the S.U.V. In 1973, light trucks amounted to 3 percent of new vehicle sales. Today they account for half.

Europe is in more trouble than we thought

This is a real crisis,

Beer brewers in Munich may not be able to supply enough beer for the annual Oktoberfest beer festival, local newspaper Munich TZ reported, but the problem is not a lack of the alcoholic beverage.

Instead, Heiner Müller, manager at the Paulaner and Hacker-Pschorr brewery told TZ, brewers do not have enough bottles to supply the festival. He called on drinkers to return their empties.

Interesting blog bits

1. Arnold Kling gives an An Opinionated Guide to Educational Technology

   Here, I offer my own assessment of the prospects for technologies to revolutionize education.

2. Peter Klein on The Wrong Way to Measure Returns to Public Science Funding

   A new Milken Institute report purports to show that “[t]he benefit from every dollar invested by National Institutes of Health (NIH) outweighs the cost by many times. When we consider the economic benefits realized as a result of decrease in mortality and morbidity of all other diseases, the direct and indirect effects (such as increases in work-related productivity) are phenomenal.” There are so many problems with the study I hardly know where to begin.

3. Robert J. Gordon asks Is US economic growth over?

   Global growth is slowing – especially in advanced-technology economies. This column argues that regardless of cyclical trends, long term economic growth may grind to a halt. Two and a half centuries of rising per-capita incomes could well turn out to be a unique episode in human history.

4. Harun Onder asks What does trade have to do with climate change?

   As multilateral attempts for climate-change mitigation stall, the two-way relationship between trade and climate change is likely to come under further scrutiny. This column explains how liberalised trade has several climate-related consequences. It argues that trade policy could enforce mitigation policies but that multilateral conventions are crucial in preventing undesired protectionist consequences.

5. Chris Dillow on The Productivity Puzzle

   UK labour productivity is falling. Today's figures show that total hours worked have risen 1.6% in the last year, whilst the NIESR estimates that GDP fell 0.2% in the time. GDP per hour is now 4.5% below 2007Q4's level. Had productivity continued to grow at its 1977-2007 rate, it would be 10.8% higher.

6. Erik Brynjolfsson on Big Data’s Management Revolution

   Big data has the potential to revolutionize management. Simply put, because of big data, managers can measure, and hence know, radically more about their businesses, and directly translate that knowledge into improved decision making and performance. Of course, companies such as Google and Amazon are already doing this. After all, we expect companies that were born digital to accomplish things that business executives could only dream of a generation ago. But in fact the use of big data has the potential to transform traditional businesses as well.

7. John Taylor on A New Chart Cast on the Bad News Recovery
   

   As many have observed the employment report for August released today was disappointing news, but it really is a continuation of a steady stream of bad employment news that has been the story of this recovery since its beginning. The economy is growing too slowly to increase jobs at a pace that matches the growing population—unlike previous recoveries from deep recessions.

The mysteries of money

John H. Cochrane and Harald Uhlig are interviewed by Gideon Magnus (Chicago PhD) at Morningstar. They talk about the foundations of money, fiscal theory, monetary policy, European debt problems, etc. About the video Cochrane writes

The video starts a little abruptly, as it left out Gideon's thoughtful introduction (it's in the Magazine) and framing question:

Gideon Magnus: I want to discuss the value of money and the idea that money is valued similarly to any other asset. Are there really assets backing money? If so, what are they? John, please explain.

The online version of the interview is here.

EconTalk this week

Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how incentives in academic life create a tension between truth-seeking and professional advancement. Nosek argues that these incentives create a subconscious bias toward making research decisions in favor of novel results that may not be true, particularly in empirical and experimental work in the social sciences. In the second half of the conversation, Nosek details some practical innovations occurring in the field of psychology, to replicate established results and to publicize unpublished results that are not sufficiently exciting to merit publication but that nevertheless advance understanding and knowledge. These include the Open Science Framework and PsychFileDrawer.

Auld keen on debunking Keen (updated)

Steven Keen is going around the country right now explaining the many, many evils, as he see them, of standard economics. That the majority of economists don't agree with Keen will not come as any surprise to most people. One person who has done a great service in debunking Keen's ideas on "Debunking Economics" is Professor Christopher Auld. Back in 2002 he wrote on article on "Debunking Debunking Economics". Unfortunately this article has not been available online for some time but now Professor Auld has kindly allowed me to make it available once more. A copy is available here for those interested.

For some local comments on Keen's ideas see Anti-Dismal here and here and TVHE here and here.

Update: Matt Nolan at the TVHE blog is Debunking Keen on Bernanke: The issue of debt deflation

A note for Winston Peters

Immigration can be good for you. Yes Winston, those foreigners can in fact help the economy.

Almost a century and a half after the first large migration wave of the late 19th century, those places where migrants settled in big numbers are significantly better off than those which were virtually untouched by the migration wave. Migration is the only factor related to the period of the migration waves which is still strongly connected to current levels of development. Factors such as the level of income of the county at the end of the 19th century or early 20th century, the level of education of the population, the percentage of black population, the participation of women in the labor force, or whether the county was rural or urban – which would have determined the attractiveness of a county to migrants in the first place – have no bearing whatsoever on the current level of development of US counties. While their influence on a county's wealth and, consequently, on its economic dynamism has disappeared long ago, migration has left an imprint which still affects economic performance.

The above quote is from a working paper When migrants rule: the legacy of mass migration on economic development in the US by Andrés Rodríguez-Pose and Viola von Berlepsch.

Mike Munger has a video on majority rule

Mike Munger asks, Should majorities decide everything?

Bank resolution: from Cinderella to centre stage

From VoxEu.og comes this audio in which Xavier Freixas talks to Viv Davies about the recent changes in the European banking resolution regime. They discuss the tension between ex ante incentives and ex post efficiency in banking. Freixas argues that the best way to analyse a bank resolution situation is to think of it as a bargaining game between the bank's shareholders and the treasury.

Interesting blog bits

1. Gavin Kennedy on The Expensive Way to Do Anything
   

   Steve Forbes writes in Forbes (September) a punchy piece illustrating the benefits of “markets where possible, the state where necessary” (and not the other way round).

2. Eric Crampton on Tobacco plain packaging, if we cared about evidence
   

   The Science Media Centre provides an expert round-up of commentary on a new paper finding, unsurprisingly, that people like branded tobacco packs more than they like plain packs. What's more relevant for policy, and what we really have no clue about, is whether changing the branding on packages has effects on aggregate sales or whether it works instead to break brand loyalty and move consumers to lower-cost no-name packs.

3. Matt Nolan on PTA’s, currency, and monetary policy
   

   Yes, you really do need as many instruments as objectives.

   
   
4. Russ Roberts on The Numbers Game
   

   Here’s a pilot for a new project I’ve started–a chartcast–a visual discussion of charts and data. This first episode is a conversation with John Taylor on the economic recovery and how it compares to past recoveries.

5. Simon Burgess, Carol Propper, Marisa Ratto, Emma Tominey and Stephanie von Hinke Kessler Scholder ask Do cash incentives matter in the public sector?
   

   This column looks at the use of incentive schemes, such as performance-related pay, in the British Labour government between 1997 and 2010. It finds that cash incentives do matter, but that their design is critical.

6. Patrick A Messerlin and Sébastien Miroudot ask Public procurement markets: Where are we?

   Public spending on large-scale projects is often a way of sneaking in protectionism through the back door and there are many cases of outright corruption. With the EU and US pushing hard for more open public procurement elsewhere in the world, this column asks just how open these markets are, particularly in the EU, which claims to have the most open market in the world.

7. Winton Bates asks Is there a close relationship between subjective and objective indicators of environmental protection?

   In broad terms, the relationship is positive, but not close.

8. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson ask Why the Jews Are so Educated

   Botticini and Eckstein document that Jews were not more educated before 1st century A.D. and most probably before 7th century A.D. Rather, as Solo Baron’s classic A Social and Religious History of the Jews also argues, the change in Jewish educational practices and institutions came out of an internal conflict about the control of Jewish society between two groups, the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

9. Thomas Lumley warns us about the Attack of the killer frying pans

   There’s a headline in the Herald: Heart disease linked to non-stick cookware: study. There seems to have been some loss in translation for both the article and the headline.

What do economists really think?

In a new paper Daniel B. Klein gives us an answer. His paper is The Forsaken-Liberty Syndrome: Looking at Published Judgments to Say Whether Economists Reach a Conclusion.

The abstract reads,

Do economists reach a conclusion on a given policy issue? One way to answer the question is to survey economists at large. Another is to look at the published judgments of economists who have gone on the record. Relative to an anonymous survey, going on the record makes for much greater accountability, and presumably more personal responsibility. I discuss eleven studies of economists’ published judgments. Several of them show greater support for liberalization than found among economists at large. This is offered as evidence of what I call the forsaken-liberty syndrome. I discuss the nature of this test of such syndrome and point to some of the larger questions to which it relates.

At one point Klein writes,

But, first, we look at three cases on which the on-record support for liberalization is high but about the same as for at-large economists. On the governmental subsidization of sports franchises, stadiums, and mega-events, Coates and Humphreys (2008) find a strong consensus among on-record economists. Meanwhile, a sample of at-large economists were asked by Whaples (2006) about whether “Local and state governments in the U.S. should eliminate subsidies to professional sports franchises.” Eighty-five percent either agreed (strongly or simply), and only five percent disagreed. It is fair to say that on-record and at-large economists are about the same on this issue. In my humble judgment, sports subsidies are an exemplary case of corporate welfare and public foolishness. On this matter, the Journal of Economic Perspectives has taken care to educate economists at large, publishing a fine analysis by Siegfried and Zimbalist (2000).

But what influence will this consensus have on local or national politicians? I'm guessing very little. :-(.

• Coates, Dennis and Brad R. Humphreys. 2008. "Do Economists Reach a Conclusion on Subsidies for Sports Franchises, Stadiums, and Mega-Events?" Econ Journal Watch 5(3): 294-315. Here.
• Whaples, Robert. (2006). “Do Economists Agree on Anything? Yes!” Economists’ Voice 3(9), art 1. Here