Greg Mankiw

Nicholas Gregory Mankiw (born February 3, 1958) is an American economist and the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University, best known in academia for his work on New Keynesian economics.

• Today, Keynesian theorizing does not inspire whispers and giggles from the audience. There are many economists under the age of forty who do not take offense when their work is called ‘Keynesian’, and I count myself as one of them. If Keynesian economics was dead in 1980, then today it has been reincarnated.
  • N. Gregory Mankiw, "The reincarnation of Keynesian economics", European Economic Review (1992).

• It is too early to say there is a consensus about how all these topics fit together. Yet one can say that the new classical challenge has been met: Keynesian economics has been reincarnated into a body with firm microeconomic muscle.
  • N. Gregory Mankiw, "The reincarnation of Keynesian economics", European Economic Review (1992).

• Despite its flaws, Peddling Prosperity has much to recommend it. There is no book written for a lay audience that explains the economics profession with more perception or clarity than this one.
  • N. Gregory Mankiw, Review of Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in the Age of Diminished Expectations by Paul Krugman, Journal of Economic Literature (Dec., 1995)

• Although Keynes’s General Theory provides the foundation for much of our current understanding of economic fluctuations, it is important to remember that classical economics provides the right answers to many fundamental questions.
  • N. Gregory Mankiw]], Macroeconomics, Preview ; Cited in: David Colander (2005). 'The Stories Economists Tell. p. 182

• If you were going to turn to only one economist to understand the problems facing the economy, there is little doubt that the economist would be John Maynard Keynes. Although Keynes died more than a half-century ago, his diagnosis of recessions and depressions remains the foundation of modern macroeconomics. His insights go a long way toward explaining the challenges we now confront.
  • N. Gregory Mankiw, "What Would Keynes Have Done?" in New York Times (November 28, 2008).

• Which brings us to a third group of macroeconomists: those who fall into neither the pro- nor the anti-Keynes camp. I count myself among the ambivalent. We credit both sides with making legitimate points, yet we watch with incredulity as the combatants take their enthusiasm or detestation too far. Keynes was a creative thinker and keen observer of economic events, but he left us with more hard questions than compelling answers.
  • N. Gregory Mankiw, "Back In Demand" Wall Street Journal (September 21, 2009).

• A few years ago, I had the good fortune of running across a first edition of Paul's textbook (not the recent reprint of the original text, but an actual 1948 edition). It was a real find. I bought the volume in an online auction for, if my recollection is correct, $35. Talk about consumer surplus! I would have gladly paid many times that.
  At the next Boston Fed meeting, I took the book along to get Paul to sign it. Below is the book's title page, along with Paul's gracious inscription.
  • Greg Mankiw, "Memories of Paul" (December 15, 2009)

• After more than a quarter-century as a professional economist, I have a confession to make: There is a lot I don’t know about the economy. Indeed, the area of economics where I have devoted most of my energy and attention — the ups and downs of the business cycle — is where I find myself most often confronting important questions without obvious answers.
  • If You Have the Answers, Tell Me, The New York Times, May 7, 2011.

• The circular-flow diagram offers a simple way of organizing the economic transactions that occur between households and firms in the economy. The two loops of the circular-flow diagram are distinct but related. The inner loop represents the flows of inputs and outputs. The households sell the use of their labor, land, and capital to the firms in the markets for the factors of production. The firms then use these factors to produce goods and services, which in turn are sold to households in the markets for goods...
  • N. Gregory Mankiw, Brief Principles of Macroeconomics. 2011, p. 24-25

N. Gregory Mankiw, Principle of Economics (7th ed., 2015)

• Economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources. In most societies, resources are allocated not by an all-powerful dictator but through the combined actions of millions of households and firms.
  • Ch. 1. Ten Principles of Economics; p. 4

• Countries as well as families benefit from the ability to trade with one another. Trade allows countries to specialize in what they do best and to enjoy a greater variety of goods and services. The Japanese, as well as the French and the Egyptians and the Brazilians, are as much our partners in the world economy as they are our competitors.
  • Ch. 1. Ten Principles of Economics; p. 10

• To find a substitute for laboratory experiments, economists pay close attention to the natural experiments offered by history.
  • Ch. 2. Thinking Like an Economist; p. 21

• Microeconomics and macroeconomics are closely intertwined. Because changes in the overall economy arise from the decisions of millions of individuals, it is impossible to understand macroeconomic developments without considering the associated microeconomic decisions.
  • Ch. 2. Thinking Like an Economist; p. 27

• Economics is a young science, and there is still much to be learned. Economists sometimes disagree because they have different hunches about the validity of alternative theories or about the size of important parameters that measure how economic variables are related.
  • Ch. 2. Thinking Like an Economist; p. 30

• A market is a group of buyers and sellers of a particular good or service. The buyers as a group determine the demand for the product, and the sellers as a group determine the supply of the product. Markets take many forms. Some markets are highly organized, such as the markets for many agricultural commodities. In these markets, buyers and sellers meet at a specific time and place, where an auctioneer helps set prices and arrange sales. More often, markets are less organized.
  • Ch. 4. The Market Forces of Supply and Demand; p. 66

• Market power and externalities are examples of a general phenomenon called market failure—the inability of some unregulated markets to allocate resources efficiently. When markets fail, public policy can potentially remedy the problem and increase economic efficiency. Microeconomists devote much effort to studying when market failure is likely and what sorts of policies are best at correcting market failures. As you continue your study of economics, you will see that the tools of welfare economics developed here are readily adapted to that endeavor. Despite the possibility of market failure, the invisible hand of the marketplace is extraordinarily important.
  • Ch. 7. Consumers, Producers, and the Efficiency of Markets; p. 150

• Colander: What’s your view of the New Keynesian approach?
  Tobin: I’m not sure what that means. If it means people like Greg Mankiw, I don’t regard them as Keynesians. I don’t think they have involuntary unemployment or absence of market clearing. It is a misnomer to call Mankiw any form of Keynesian.
  Colander: How about real-business-cycle theorists?
  Tobin: Well, that’s just the enemy.
  • David Colander, "Conversations with James Tobin and Robert J. Shiller on the “Yale Tradition” in Macroeconomics", Macroeconomic Dynamics (1999), later published in Inside the Economist’s Mind: Conversations With Eminent Economists (2007) edited by Paul A. Samuelson and William A. Barnett.

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Greg Mankiw