Scott Sumner

@GeorgeSelgin Congratulations on an outstanding career. It's always nice when an academic tries to actually understand things, not just parrot the fashionable theories of the day.

Having waited for 68 years, I need to get ‘round to the serious business of goofing off. So I’m retiring this summer. I’ll still put an oar in now and then; but I plan to spend a lot more time reading, hiking, traveling, cooking, and otherwise just having a blast.

I am ending TheMoneyIllusion blog and starting a new one at Substack: scottsumner.substack.com

What mid-20th century monetarists did for our understanding of the high and volatile trend rates of inflation during 1960-1990, the Princeton School has done for our understanding of stabilization policy in a world of ultra-low rates (i.e. the new normal.) Read the whole thing.

In this paper I am more like 90/10 positive, as I would like to convince my fellow economists that the Princeton School is even more important and influential than they might realize.

I didn't know that threads were limited to 25 tweets. Here's a new thread with my final five tweets from the previous thread.

Low nominal rates often occur after a period of tight money, and vice versa. The takeaway is not that NeoFisherism is correct (it isn’t) but that one should not think in terms of rates having any causal impact.

My paper concludes by looking at how the Princeton School relates to other recent heterodox ideas, such as NeoFisherian models and market monetarism. Comparing and contrasting these approaches allows for a richer understanding of each point of view.

A 30 tweet thread discussing my new Mercatus working paper on the Princeton School of macro, which revolutionized monetary theory, providing a framework for our understanding of stabilization policy in the ultra-low interest rate 21st century. mercatus.org/system/files/s…