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Kim Bowes critique of the Roman “GDP boys” (such as myself 
), long overdue (thx to @bernard_prof & @nakhthor for posting): there is nothing worse than ignoring or unthinkingly accepting this kind of work; and of course we can always do better, or should at least try. 1/5 https://twitter.com/bernard_prof/status/1361054374781411328
), long overdue (thx to @bernard_prof & @nakhthor for posting): there is nothing worse than ignoring or unthinkingly accepting this kind of work; and of course we can always do better, or should at least try. 1/5 https://twitter.com/bernard_prof/status/1361054374781411328
That said, what worries me is not so much repeated signs of careless reading (attributing claims to me I never made & even argued against in the work she cites – that there was no real per capita growth in Rome, p.24, or that inequality causes collapse, p.25; 2/5
and rehashing the common confusion of actual wheat & wheat equivalent consumption) as the paradox at the end: if the superior research Bowes advocates has yet to be done (and it’s very much an open question if it could be scaled up to replace the approach she rejects), 3/5
how can she already tell that existing work has “probably totally misrepresented welfare and inequality as well as overall economic performance” (32)? I would stress a v different problem, the lack of statistical sophistication in macro-quantitative work (including my own), 4/5
to be remedied at least in part by application of the Bayesian techniques promoted by Myles Lavan (showcased in his articles and a forthcoming CUP volume). 5/5
