Economic Turbulence: Is a Volatile Economy Good for America?

I have tremedous respect for the work of David Warsh. So, his conclusion - is the basis for a thoughtful and civil discussion/disagreement.

Indeed, more attention to measurement in economics in general wouldn’t hurt. It has been more than 25 years since the last Nobel prize went to a measurement economist – to Richard Stone, of Cambridge University, in 1984 (and just two others before that, to Simon Kuznets and Wassily Leontief, both of Harvard, in 1971 and 1973, in the early days of the prize). Economics needs to become much more empirical.

The eventual payoff was 2006 book by Clair Brown, John Haltiwanger and Lane: Economic Turbulence: Is a Volatile Economy Good for America?, that offered a clear definition right from the start. Economic turbulence was as the entire process of economic change; workers changing jobs, firms expanding and starting up, contracting and shutting down. The sheer amount was staggering, they wrote: in any given quarter, one jon in four begins or ends, one in thirteen jobs is created or destroyed, and one in twenty establishments opens up or closes down.

A Few Words about the Vladimir Chavrid Ward