Christina Romer and the Economics of Celebrity

It's hard to predict the outcome of a situation, even when the choices seem so well-defined: 4th and goal - go for it, or take the field goal? Economy melting down - $862BB stimulus, or not?

Christina Romer and her husband Dave left their UC Berkeley Economics positions and came east when she took the role of Obama's Chief Economic Advisor in 2009. She now regrets knuckling under to make the Administration's difficult case that only by enacting the stimulus ("American Recovery and Reinvestment Act") could we cap unemployment at 8% - without the stimulus, the jobless pain could reach 9-10%. Well, the stimulus was passed - and the rate hit 10% anyway (a year and a half later, it still has not dropped below 9.5%). And she's about to return to Berkeley.

As married colleagues, Dave and Christy Romer have shared professional counsel and collaborated on writings during their careers.

Dave and I were classmates in the Amherst public school system through graduation in 1976. In addition to being the sharpest math wiz in the class, Dave was notorious for at least two monumental contributions to the life of the school: first, his grand front yard on Snell Street became the Polo Grounds of Wiffleball for a long-running gang of ruffians (mostly Amherst College brats). And second, he founded and ran Ye Olde Football Pool, and elaborate, dime-a-play weekly contest to predict the winners of all Sunday NFL games, with the winner and score of the Monday Night Game being the tie-breaker. Gambling - particularly by underage schoolkids, for $$, and on school property - being illegal, we merrye olde players used pseudonyms. Mine was 4-Pi-r-cubed (formula for area of the surface of a sphere - or was it the volume of a sphere?).

I note Dave's affectionate thank you to Christina in his fascinating paper on using NFL statistical evidence (the 4th-and-goal scenario noted above) to understand whether and how firms "maximize." If you're an economics neophyte, and a football fan, I highly recommend it.

Perhaps Obama should have listened to Joe Paterno, and David Romer, when calling the plays last year. And should have listened more to Christy Romer, and less (or not at all) to that jackass Larry Summers!