Michael Boskin is Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was Chairman of George H. W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1989 to 1993, and headed the so-called Boskin Commission, a congressional advisory body that highlighted errors in official US inflation estimates.
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Michael Boskin
Commentaries by Michael Boskin
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The Debt-Growth Controversy
STANFORD – The recent controversy over errors in a 2010 paper by the economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff is a sad commentary on th…
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Why Consolidate?
STANFORD – Around the world, raging debates about whether, when, how, and how much to reduce large budget deficits and high levels of sovere…
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Taming Leviathan
STANFORD – A successful society needs effective, affordable government to perform its necessary functions well, and that includes sufficient…
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A New Agenda for China’s New Leaders?
STANFORD – Political leadership transitions typically signal either a change in direction or continuity. But the mere prospect of such a tra…
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America’s Election and the Global Economy
STANFORD – As America’s elections approach, with President Barack Obama slightly in front of his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts…
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California Bad Dreaming
STANFORD – While central governments’ fiscal problems plague many economies, a parallel crisis is enveloping many subnational governments ar…
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Threading the Fiscal Needle
PALO ALTO – Elections often turn on the state of the economy, especially in hard times. When growth and jobs are down, voters throw out incu…
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Whither Europe?
BEIJING – With the likelihood of a contagious sovereign-debt implosion and European bank failures greatly reduced by the Greek debt deal and…
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A Referendum on Obama
STANFORD – Successful political candidates try to implement the proposals on which they ran. In the United States, President Barack Obama an…
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Europe’s Last Best Chance
STANFORD – The resignations of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi have highlighted how Gree…
The Debt-Growth Controversy
Emanuele Canegrati: I completely agree with Professor Boskin and this comment seems to me one of the best ever written. It is debatable whether the 90% threshold is reasonable or not. But one thing must be clear: sooner …
The Debt-Growth Controversy
Ben Leet: Professor Boskin seems to have overlooked the wage stagnation of the past 40 years. This stagnation has resulted in a vastly more unequal distribution of national income, note the rising Gini levels s…