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Hard to stop thinking about Marty Feldstein and the huge hole he leaves behind. Not surprising to see reactions from economists across the political spectrum, like this from @paulkrugman. There is a broader lesson in this about universities and academic economics.
I've spent a lot of time in the DC policy community and a lot of time in universities. I love them both. In DC you spend much more time with your team: like-minded people trying to advance shared goals. In universities you spend less time worrying about any immediate impact.
This can make DC people suspicious of university people, eg Kudlow's comment on Marty in 1983: "There's always been the suspicion that he's playing to Harvard, the Charles River crowd, that he's more interested in protecting his academic integrity than the President's programs."
When I was in government I tried to protect my academic integrity, including playing to a Charles River crowd that included Greg Mankiw and Marty Feldstein (the former my thesis adviser, and the later my first economic teacher, both friends).
I believe that helped me do a better job for President Obama--and have every reason to believe he thought the same. I know it helped me advance better policies.
Some may view this with suspicion, thinking our team was at war with Marty and Greg's views. Why care about their views? Isn't that identifying with a self-protecting elite over advancing my team's goals? Or adopting a mindless centrism that averages views across the spectrum?
Partly I care about the views of people like Marty and Greg because I'm almost never 100% sure about my own views and think I'll get smarter by developing better answers to my critics and also sometimes even changing my mind.
But partly I have a naive, un-instrumentalist view that teaching, mentoring, research, convening, can all advance the world even if they are not oriented around an instrumentalist, team-oriented goal.
Marty's op-eds read like the work of a member of a his team. They are well argued, wide ranging, almost all of them advocating Republican positions and scathing on Democratic ones. I disagree with most of them, but think that is an important and worthwhile form of engagement.
Marty also established the NBER as a hub of policy-relevant economic research. He advanced and organized innumerable working papers, conferences, edited volumes, and the like, without the type of instrumentalist screen you would expect from a team approach.
Marty advised both Larry Lindsey and Raj Chetty. He didn't ask the question of whether advising Raj might ultimately lead to a larger government and higher tax rates, thus hurting his team's goals. It wasn't an instrumentalist, team-based decision to advise Raj.
In DC policy forums, you are likely to describe a paper advancing a congenial idea as "important" regardless of its degree of rigor. At a university economics seminar you are likely to try to rip apart a paper's methodology regardless of whether you find its conclusion congenial.
I say all of this not to argue for the superiority of universities to the more instrumentalist, team oriented approach that is common in DC. I think both play an important role and I try to keep my feet in both of these worlds.
(As an aside, my DC affiliation is @PIIE, which is not really what I have in mind when I talk about the instrumentalist, team-oriented approach in DC as it has not been historically aligned with either party although generally has been aligned with pro-trade views.)
Marty taught many of us a lot about economics. About how to use a combination of theory, empirics, and worldliness to develop and advance our views. About how research could help policy and policy could help research.
Most importantly, however, I am personally grateful for my own sake and for the sake of economic research and policy that he showed us how taking the mission of a university seriously could advance the world--often in ways that you might not have expected.
