Summers and Mankiw Blew Up The Economy?

The Real-World Economics Review Blog has taken two economic blogosphere truths to heart: polls are fun, and fruitlessly blaming people for messing up the economy is even more so. They’ve opened online voting for the Dynamite Prize in Economics, which is to be awarded to the three economists with the heaviest involvement in “blowing up” the economy. True to form, several Harvard minds are at the top of the list.

A perpetual favorite among economic bloggers, former University President Lawrence R. Summers is on the shortlist for working to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act and collaborating with Greenspan and Wall Street to prevent efforts to regulate derivatives.

Fisher S. Black ’59 is a candidate for his contribution to the Black-Scholes model, which the blog claims to be "bogus" and misleading, resulting in an "explosive growth of financial derivatives."

Though Summers and Black are the only two Harvard mainstays to make the list, other bloggers think Harvard’s representation shouldn’t end there. Angry Bear, an economics blog, backs the idea that those who can’t, teach, lamenting that Professor N. Gregory Mankiw (“author of the textbook that corrupts more Econ 101 people than any other”) and Harvard Business School Professor Michael C. Jensen were excluded from the list.

With Valentine’s Day behind us and the Black Eyed Peas concert less than two weeks away, we can’t help but wonder: Where is the love? Would the world truly be better off if Harvard were to stop teaching economics? Humanities departments would burgeon, post-Ec 10 lunch lines in Annenberg would dissipate, and former ec concentrators—no longer wishing to strut down Wall Street—wouldn’t be disappointed when said jobs eluded them. Such a world would have to be governed by a powerful force. Some call this force cynicism. Some call it communism.

Alas, no one calls it realistic.