A neat piece – What are economists for?
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/08/18/what-are-economists-for/
Can economic discussions bring people together?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/business/getting-along-when-you-disagree.html
The Economist
on Stanley Fischer - Father of Modern Applied Macroeconomics:
“Mr Fischer questioned
this fatalism and, in so doing, helped make the intellectual case for
revitalising technocratic management. That work was centred on the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the home of economic luminaries
like Paul Samuelson and Rudiger Dornbusch and the theories that would become
New Keynesianism. There, Mr Fischer and others explored when a deft
intervention could do some good. In 1977, for instance, he argued that
long-term contracts prevented prices and wages from adjusting quickly to
changes in economic fortunes. Such frictions could lead to soaring unemployment
unless trained economists were on hand to tend the government’s policy levers.
New Keynesianism became the orthodoxy in central banks and finance ministries
around the world.”