You may remember Francisco Rodriguez as the economist who has spent the better part of the last two years scientifically proving (with numbers!) that even though Venezuelans are spending more, eating more and generally happier today than even before, they are actually poor and miserable? His thesis is counterintuitive and counter-empirical and Foreign Affairs was thrilled to run his article last month without checking it too much, and of course it turned out to be riddled with so many methodological mistakes that the Center for Economic and Policy Research published it’s own paper pointing them all out. So then Rodriguez ratcheted up the (sexual?) tension by releasing his own-own “critique” of the CEPR paper that spent as much time attacking CEPR economist Mark Weisbrot personally as he did explaining his crappy methodology in the first place.
Anyway if econ cat fights are your bag you’ll be thrilled to learn that today CEPR responds. And it turns out Rodriguez’s rebuttal was as dumb as his original paper, filled with straw men, cherry picked data and, in some cases, all new numbers. And Weisbrot prefaces his paper with a fun little discussion of the political, media and academic context that the debate takes place in, including this:
The current debate is useful, although it would be better if Rodriguez actually cited my writing, rather than his own approximations to my writing. As will be seen below, these are not always accurate or even true.Snap! Zing! OK now get a room you two.
