Austan Goolsbee: recommendation

Transcript context

…What is it in academic macroeconomics, or just economics, that you found surprisingly useful being a Fed president? I was a data guy, as you know, in the field of economics. Soon as I got there, there’s all this pressure from the press and from others: “Are you a dove? Are you a hawk?” I used to say, “Look, I’m not one of the birds. I’m in the data dogs.” The first rule of the data dogs is, there’s a time for walking and a time for sniffing, and knowing the difference between those. I would say that discipline of academic economics — getting into the data — is super useful. Then, we are used to thinking about causality and identification. I do think we could use a little more of that in a macro context. Say you’re trying to figure out the connection between the money supply and the rate of price inflation. What’s the first mental model you put on as a hat? You might disregard it when the data tells you otherwise, but where do you start?…

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