Vem är inte fascinerad av Chicago-skolan? Men vad innebär begreppet och hur har den senaste krisen påverkat uppfattningen om den? Genom en serie intervjuer i The New Yorker med ledande Chicago-forskare tecknar John Cassidy en intressant bild. Läs mer:

• Intervju med Richard Thaler.
• Intervju med Raghuram Rajan.
• Intervju med Kevin Murphy.
• Intervju med James Heckman.
• Intervju med Gary Becker.
• Intervju med John Cochrane.
• Intervju med Eugene Fama.
• Intervju med Richard Posner (förvisso en Chicago-jurist).

Själv fastnade jag särskilt för detta, i intervjun med Murphy:

What about skepticism toward the government: Isn’t that also a key part of the Chicago tradition?

Sure. You have to ask why would the government get it right. You can’t just say, here’s a market failure and the government needs to step in and address it. You have to look in detail at what the government might do, and compare the relative effectiveness of the two.

Och för detta, i intervjun med Fama:

In the past, I think you have been quoted as saying that you don’t even believe in the possibility of bubbles.

I never said that. I want people to use the term in a consistent way. For example, I didn’t renew my subscription to The Economist because they use the world bubble three times on every page. Any time prices went up and down—I guess that is what they call a bubble. People have become entirely sloppy. People have jumped on the bandwagon of blaming financial markets. I can tell a story very easily in which the financial markets were a casualty of the recession, not a cause of it.

Det finns mycket mer spännande att läsa i dessa intervjuer!

Tips: Fredrik Hansen.