Chicago Bears fans like myself eagerly anticipate the beginning of the new Bears season, less than 10 days from now. If you visit any part of Chicago on a Sunday during the season, you readily hear shouts of “the Bears are No. 1!” and “the Packers stink!,” or perhaps the same sentiment vividly expressed in more colorful language (the Packers are our archrivals from north of the state line).

When you make your visit, I recommend that you recognize a pep rally for what it is. Don’t take those statements literally, and don’t play the eccentric fool and try to educate us on the truth about the results of Chicago Bears’ games. We are aware that the Bears haven’t won the Super Bowl in almost 30 years. We understand that the Packers’ quarterback and his predecessor are among the greatest of all time.

Only an eccentric fool concludes from the pep rally chants that the sports fans are delusional or misinformed enough to actually believe what they’re saying.

Despite practicing the Bears-fan ritual for my entire life, I have proven woefully unable to bring that same spirit to economic analysis. I am 100 percent guilty of playing the eccentric fool at the pep rally led by Jared Bernstein by thinking that he might be using the language of scholarship, and that his words ought to be taken literally.

Take the words from Mr. Bernstein’s latest chant, “it’s standard issue in all the economics textbooks Professor Mulligan cites – that Keynesian stimulus can lead to faster growth than would otherwise occur.” Only an eccentric fool would pay close attention to these words and think that they mean that each of the four economic growth books I cited – Barro/Sala-i-Martin, Acemoglu, Aghion/Howitt, and Weil – actually include an extensive treatment of Keynesian stimulus alongside the other growth theories.

Only an eccentric fool would be startled to learn that in fact Barro and Sala-i-Martin find that they should cover the topic of economic growth without even mentioning Keynesian stimulus. Don’t be startled that the three other books don’t include Keynesian stimulus either, let alone treat Keynesian stimulus as “standard issue.”

The reality is that economic growth theory treats Keynesian stimulus about the same as it treats U.F.O.’s: they are not considered to be an important part of what creates sustained growth for nations (see also my previous list of growth policies from Aghion and Howitt’s economic growth book, and the notable absence of any kind of policy to promote short run consumption).

Only the eccentric fool would also be frustrated by Bernstein’s use of “demand-constrained” and “slack” economy chants as an excuse to ignore what has been learned from growth economics. I agree with him that our economy still has a high ratio of unemployed to job vacancies. But lots of countries have experienced high unemployment over the years, and have had too many of their citizens looking desperately but unsuccessfully for good jobs. Those countries have been studied by growth economists, too. (I cited one of the famous empirical studies in my earlier post; see also the empirical studies cited in the aforementioned textbooks, and the chapters in my book that deal with the properties of economies with high ratios of unemployment to vacancies.) Nonetheless, those economists conclude that sustained growth most likely comes from some kind of investment, and not from redistribution toward segments of society with a low propensity to save and invest.

What Mr. Bernstein seems to mean is that he thinks that temporary stimulus is the right policy for now, but “temporary stimulus” sounds better when pronounced as “economic growth policy.” Since we’re at a pep rally, it doesn’t matter that “economic growth” already has another meaning among scholars.

So let’s not dwell on the meaning of words, theories and empirical results, and instead just proclaim our words in harmony and with enthusiasm: “Temporary stimulus is economic growth!” “Stimulus is No. 1!”


Casey B. Mulligan is an economics professor at the University of Chicago He is the author of "The Redistribution Recession: How Labor Market Distortions Contracted the Economy."