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The doctrine of expansionary austerity — the claim that slashing spending would actually boost demand and employment, because it would have such positive effects on confidence that this would outweigh the direct drag — was immensely popular among policymakers in 2010, as the great turn toward austerity began. But the statistical underpinnings of the doctrine fell apart under scrutiny: the methods Alberto Alesina used to identify changes in fiscal policy did not, it turned out, do a very good job, and more careful work found that historically austerity has in fact been contractionary after all. Moreover, the experience of austerity programs seemed to confirm what Keynesians new and old had warned from the beginning — that the negative effects of austerity are much larger under conditions where they cannot be offset by conventional monetary policy.

So at this point research economists overwhelmingly believe that austerity is contractionary (and that stimulus is expansionary). Surveys show overwhelming support among US economists for the proposition that the ARRA was a job creator, a huge majority of British academics denying that the Cameron austerity program was positive for growth. The Federal Reserve, the IMF, the OECD, the OBR, and more believe that austerity is contractionary. Nothing in economics is every settled for good, but for now at least expansionary austerity has virtually collapsed as a doctrine taken seriously by researchers.

Nonetheless, Simon Wren-Lewis points us to Robert Peston of the BBC declaring

I am simply pointing out that there is a debate here (though Krugman, Wren-Lewis and Portes are utterly persuaded they’ve won this match – and take the somewhat patronising view that voters who think differently are ignorant sheep led astray by a malign or blinkered media).

Wow. Yes, I suppose that “there is a debate” — there are debates about lots of things, from climate change to evolution to alien spaceships hidden in Area 51. But to suggest that this debate is at all symmetric is just wrong — and deeply misleading to one’s audience.

As for the claim that it’s somehow patronizing to suggest that voters are ill-informed when (a) macroeconomics is a technical subject, and (b) the media have indeed misreported the state of the professional debate — well, this is sort of an economic version of the line that one must not suggest that the Iraq war was launched on false pretenses, because this would be disrespectful to the troops. If you’re being accused of misleading reporting, it’s hardly a defense to say that the public believed your misinformation — more like a self-indictment.

Again, we’re not talking about the truth of how fiscal policy works so much as the state of professional opinion on that question, which is very one-sided. And it’s actually disturbing to see reporters unwilling to admit that simple reality.