John Taylor May Have One Thing Right

Paul Krugman provides us with the summary of a conference at the Hoover Institute provided by John Taylor. Paul notes that Taylor’s summary misrepresented what Bob Hall said:

Taylor makes it seem as if Bob Hall showed that fiscal expansion is ineffective. Yet if you have actually been following Hall — which I have, carefully — you’d know that he has been producing extensive evidence that fiscal expansion does, indeed, work; he argues that the Obama stimulus made the slump considerably less severe. His complaint is that the stimulus wasn’t big enough — which is the same argument I made from the beginning.

For a more fair and balanced summary – see Noahpinion. But let’s also note the following from Taylor’s summary:

I presented research with John Cogan on fiscal policy showing that it had not been successful in raising government purchases and was ineffective regardless of the size of the multiplier.

In other words – we really did not try fiscal stimulus after all. Isn’t that also been what Paul has been saying for quite a while!