Talk:N. Gregory Mankiw

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Contents 1 Pigou Club merger 2 Another Publication 3 Naniyo 4 Moderate-to-liberal? 5 Hamburger flippers

[edit] Pigou Club merger

The "Pigou Club" exists only as a bunch of blog posts by Mankiw. The idea that he "founded" a "group", as suggested in the Pigou Club article, is a bit much IMO; then there is a listing of the dates on which Mankiw blogged about each person's Pigovian-tax advocacy, which is the sort of thing that Mankiw would put in a FAQ on his blog, not something to be outsourced to an encyclopedia (compare, for example, how Ewing Theory redirects to Bill Simmons); and that's almost all the Pigou Club page is. The page basically seems soapbox-y and could probably be deleted outright, though there may be a nugget or two worth preserving in a merger, such as the NYT story and the response of a NoPigou Club. --Jjb 09:36, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another Publication

Principles of Economics

[edit] Naniyo

This page was moved from N. Gregory Mankiw, but since that is what Mankiw is more generally known as, I think that should be the title. Otherwise, there's no way to communicate to the reader that generally the first name is just given as an initial, except to actually say that in the article itself, which I think would look clumsy. Everyking 22:29, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Moderate-to-liberal?

Is that an accurate description? Mankiw served in the Bush administration and he is currently a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute which would suggest that if anything he is right-of-center on an American political spectrum.

[edit] Hamburger flippers

The idea that Mankiw proposed reclassifying fast food workers (hamburger flippers) as manufacturing is apocryphal. This was much discussed because it was election-year silliness, but it's not true (see pages 73-74 of the 2004 Economic Report of the President and it's obvious that this is not correct). The link in the Controversy section is to a letter to the editor, not a factual source.

Pswagel 24 January 2006

This story does appear to have a factual basis, although you are absolutely right that it was poorly sourced in our article (I'm guessing someone just did a Google search and pasted the first thing that came up, which was a letter to the editor as you say). I've switched the source to a New York Times news article (sorry, requires Time Select) which includes a quote of Mankiw. Here are the first few paragraphs:

Is cooking a hamburger patty and inserting the meat, lettuce and ketchup inside a bun a manufacturing job, like assembling automobiles?

That question is posed in the new Economic Report of the President, a thick annual compendium of observations and statistics on the health of the United States economy.

The latest edition, sent to Congress last week, questions whether fast-food restaurants should continue to be counted as part of the service sector or should be reclassified as manufacturers. No answers were offered.

In a speech to Washington economists Tuesday, N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, said that properly classifying such workers was 'an important consideration' in setting economic policy.

Crust 21:12, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

That's is the NY Times story that started it all, but it's inaccurate. If you look at the pages I mentioned above in the original report, you can see that the CEA Report does not question whether anything should be classified. (I was working at CEA at that time, though I have since left the White House). The NY Times refused to correct their error, but hopefully the Wikipedia won't propagate it -- or at least will explain. To see this, you really have to look at the page of text in the underlying Report (at the original source, not just at the press article about it). An explanation might saying something like: "Press reports suggested that the CEA Report had raised the question of reclassifying fast food workers as manufacturing, and this suggestion received a good deal of publicity since the implication was that the Administration was seeking to cover up the lack of job growth through a statistical change. The point in the CEA Report was actually that the decision to classify industries as services or manufacturing was inherently arbitrary and should not be used to guide policy such as to provide a tax break to manufacturing. Contrary to the suggestion of the New York Times article, the Report did not raise the question of reclassifying hamburger flippers."

Pswagel 24 January 2006

Pswagel, thanks for the reply and I appreciate you disclosing your involvement with the CEA. I've modified the relevant sentence in the article and added a link to Mankiw's speech that the Times referred to. Here is the most relevant paragraph from Mankiw's speech:

A box in the Economic Report discusses an important consideration in assessing policies that apply to manufacturing: the definition of what constitutes manufacturing is far from clear. For example, when a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, is it providing a service or combining inputs to manufacture a product?

Crust 14:50, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Similar language can be found in the actual Economic Report of the President, in Box 2-2:

The value of the output of the U.S. manufacturing sector as defined in official U.S. statistics is larger than the economies of all but a handful of other countries. The definition of a manufactured product, however, is not straightforward. When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a "service" or is it combining inputs to "manufacture" a product?

Pswagel, the CEA statement you quote is accurate on the Report but a little misleading on what the NYT article said. The NYT article describes what the report said fairly accurately I think, including mentioning the tax angle. I suspect what the CEA really objects to is this paragraph:

David Huether, chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers, said he had heard that some economists wanted to count hamburger flipping as manufacturing, which he noted would produce statistics showing more jobs in what has been a declining sector of the economy.

Huether is arguably suggesting that the CEA was floating a trial balloon for reclassification. That may or may not be correct, but note the Times is quoting Huether not endorsing this view as established fact. Also, the CEA denial you quote doesn't really cover this; it is only about what is explicitly in the report.

Crust 15:26, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Mr. Huether is wrong about the trial balloon part, but that's just his opinion. The problem is really with just one sentence in the NY Times article -- but it's the one sentence that the Wikipedia article keys on. That is the sentence that asserts that the CEA Report raises the question of reclassifying. If you look again at the CEA Report, you see that the question is simply not raised in the first place. The quotations you have above from the Report and the speech say that classifications are arbitrary and should not be used. But they do not raise the question of reclassifying. The word reclassifying is key -- that is to take action to change the classification and is an idea that arises only from the NY Times. It's not that no conclusions were made; the question was raised only by the New York Times and not by the CEA Report. The point of the box is that classifications should not be used; there is simply no discussion of changing anything. The underlying substance -- the reason for the box -- is that there was a bill in Congress to provide a tax break to manufacturers. The Report was saying that once you do that, everyone is going to say that they're manufacturing and that trying to distinguish is arbitrary. Hence, classifications should not be used for policy. But that's light-years from suggesting that the classification of anything should be changed. At the very least, the text in the article should be changed; I thought my previous suggestion got to the fact that there was a controversy while at the same time sticking the straight facts of the text in the Report. The key is the idea of changing things -- that idea is simply not in the Report. The Report only suggests not using classifications; it does not raise the question of changing anything.

I'm sorry for asking you to parse one sentence in the NY Times, but the entire controversy arises from the invention of the NY Times that the Report raises the question of changing classifications. This is my first experience editing Wikipedia (I've used it a few times to check information and found it handy), so I don't fully understand how this is resolved. But if you are inclined not to make further changes (pardon the pun), I would be grateful if you could point me to the appropriate "appeal" process.

Pswagel 25 January 2006

Pswagel, note that I did remove reference to reclassication after your earlier comments and changed the language to say that Mankiw said that flipping hamburgers "could be considered" a manufacturing job. If that still seems off to you, please be bold and edit the language of the article as you think appropriate. I do think that this incident should be mentioned (based on how much press it got). If you want to give a detailed explanation of all the issues, including quotes from the report, etc. then that might be a bit lengthy for this article and you may want to consider starting a new article on the controversy and giving a link to it here. Cheers, Crust 19:37, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

What I find a little confusing is why such a suggestion generates controversy. Perhaps an inclusion of the history of the controversy would be more useful than the assertion that Mankiw made the suggestion. (The above discussion seems to be a good starting point) I'd help, but I frankly know nothing about it. Also, link 3 seems to be dead. I assume it is supposed to link to the Economic Report of the President.... Coleca 23:37, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the above suggestions. I haven't had a chance to collect thoughts and put down something coherent, but I will soon. The NY Times article made news because people saw the mere suggestion that the White House was considering reclassifying some service workers as manufacturing as an attempt to cover up the decline in manufacturing employment. This is why the (false) suggestion that the Report raised the question of reclassification made news. Many silly things happened in 2004 because of the Presidential election... Pswagel 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I edited the Controversy section, seeking to maintain NPOV. Pswagel 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Great job, Pswagel. (I did make some edits to what you wrote, though.) Crust 15:10, 7 February 2006 (UTC)