And finally, no matter how good the science gets, there are problems that inevitably depend on judgement, on art, on a feel for financial markets.
Author
Martin Feldstein
8 quotations
About Martin Feldstein
Martin Stuart Feldstein was an American economist. He was the George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University and the president emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He served as president and chief executive officer of the bureau from 1978 to 2008. From 1982 to 1984, Feldstein served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and as chief economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan. Feldstein was also a member of the Washington-based financial advisory body th…
Read on Wikipedia → Find books by Martin FeldsteinFirst, I think the science of monetary economics has clearly gotten better.
A second reason why science cannot replace judgement is the behavior of financial markets.
Increased government spending can provide a temporary stimulus to demand and output but in the longer run higher levels of government spending crowd out private investment or require higher taxes tha…
But because we in the United States finance our current account deficit by borrowing in our own currency, we can move to a more competitive dollar without the adverse effects that followed currency d…
To finance this trade deficit, the U.S. has to borrow from the rest of the world or sell American assets like stocks, businesses, and real estate to the rest of the world.
The only way that we can reduce our financial dependence on the inflow of funds from the rest of the world is to reduce our trade deficit.
A rise in the level of saving can reduce aggregate activity temporarily but only a sustained high level of saving makes it possible to have the sustained high level of business investment that contri…
Advertisement