Krugman asked journalists not to focus on the feud, but the impact of policymaking. Krugman called 'spectacularly uncivil'

It’s more like a mixed martial arts brawl than an economic discussion.

Two Harvard academics are accusing Paul Krugman of “spectacularly uncivil” behavior, and The New York Times columnist is punching back.


Harvard’s Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff finally lashed out at Krugman after enduing his relentless criticism of errors in a paper the duo wrote linking high debt to low GDP growth. That paper, which had become influential in GOP circles and in Europe, had mathematical mistakes that were discovered by a University of Massachusetts graduate student last month.

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“We admire your past scholarly work, which influences us to this day. So it has been with deep disappointment that we have experienced your spectacularly uncivil behavior the past few weeks,” Reinhart and Rogoff wrote in a letter posted on the former’s website.

“You have attacked us in very personal terms, virtually non-stop, in your New York Times column and blog posts,” the pair continued. “… Your characterization of our work and of our policy impact is selective and shallow. It is deeply misleading about where we stand on the issues. And we would respectfully submit, your logic and evidence on the policy substance is not nearly as compelling as you imply.”

Krugman, who earlier labeled the pair “objects of much ridicule” in the New York Review of Books, responded with two blog posts. In the first, titled “Reinhart and Rogoff Are Not Happy,” Krugman took the pair to task on Sunday for standing by their contention that growth falls spectacularly after debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP.

In a second post — headlined “It’s the policy, stupid” — Krugman asked journalists not to focus on the feud, and more on the impact of economic policymaking.

“Since we’re probably going to have a bunch of stories about feuding economists and all that, just a reminder: It’s not about the people,” The Times columnist wrote. “It’s about the disastrous wrong turn policy took, all across the advanced world, in 2010. The economists matter only to the extent that they aided and abetted that wrong turn; their feelings (and mine!) matter not at all.”