Tuesday, March 8, 2016

The Methodology of Brad DeLong

"In general, when I embark on an understanding-and-critique task, I find myself in one of four situations. Sometimes the people I am reading are not as smart as I am and have not done their homework: they are my lawful prey. Sometimes the people are smarter than I am but have not done their homework: I critique them by doing yet more homework. Sometimes the people have done their homework but are not as smart as I am: I critique them by working hard to be smart.
"And sometimes the people are smarter than I am and done their homework. Then I have a very hard task indeed--and readers should understand that for them to bet on the correctness of my conclusions would not be to maximize expected value."
--Brad DeLong

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