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A thread on foolish consistency and little minds: one thing I often encounter in my role as a public intellectual is someone pointing out that I once said something different from what I'm saying now. Why, yes: I do change my views when I get new information 1/
This is what you're supposed to do! Recently Larry Katz and Alan Krueger, who put out a widely cited study on the gig economy, discovered that new evidence makes the growth of that economy look much smaller. And they said so 2/ nber.org/papers/w25425
This is to their credit. If you never change your mind in the face of new arguments and evidence, you're probably a propagandist, not a real economist. Treating such shifts as gotcha moments says more about the critic than the researcher 3/
I've had plenty of such shifts, and I'm proud of them. For example, 25 years ago I was a conventional minimum-wages-reduce employment guy. But then I read Card and Krueger, plus the followup literature, and realized that the evidence said otherwise 4/
I was more conventional-minded about debt, too -- but like @ojblanchard1 have been persuaded by evidence that debt concerns have been overblown 5/
And I wasn't a 70% top marginal rate guy until I read Diamond and Saez, which was revelatory. When two of our greatest economists make a really compelling case, changing your mind seems appropriate 6/ aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…
Apparently it was Paul Samuelson, not Keynes, who said that when his information changed, he changed his mind -- what do you do? Whatever the source, it's the right thing. Show me someone who never changes their mind, and I'll show you someone without much mind at all 7/
