Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s Econ Man

T-bone got me thinking in his response to my comment about Obama. Well, as a good AB’er, that meant I had to go a hunting. In this case, specifically for Obama’s econ advisor: Austan Goolsbee.

This lead me to an article by Austan Goolsbee, It’s Not About the Money. Wow, a man thinking like me. This lead me to a book: Does Atlas Shrug? The Economic Consequences of Taxing the Rich. Edited by Joel B. Slemrod which is a collection of papers presented at an October, 1997 conference in Michigan of which Mr Goolsbee was a participant.
(scroll down to mid page.) This lead me to a review of the book which I will post on later. (Yes, I’m still playing with the income data stuff.)

As a sample of Mr. Goosbee’s thinking I pulled this from his paper’s introduction:

One of the liveliest areas of debate of the last twenty years in public economics has been the argument over the behavioral effects of marginal tax rate changes.

The methodological approach in what I term the New Tax Responsiveness (NTR)literature is to control for the unobserved determinants of taxable income by using “natural experiments,”….The influence of the NTR literature such as Lindsey (1987) and Feldstein (1995a) is undeniable and, if correct, has profound implications for tax policy and revenue estimation. The backbone of the NTR approach, however, is this assumption that lower income people are a valid control group for higher income people—that the change in income of the two groups would have been identical if there were no change in taxes. If this assumption is false, existing estimates may have significant biases.

And his conclusion:

After ten years of finding large elasticities of taxable income with respect to the net of tax share by using tax changes as natural experiments, the NTR literature has had a large impact on the conventional wisdom regarding progressivity and the efficiency loss of high marginal tax rates. I argue, however, that the results from these papers are based on the faulty assumption that the very rich differ from other income groups only because they have different tax rates. Independent data on several thousand high-income executives as well as on other prominent rich people show that even the moderately rich are not a valid control group.

So what’s the up shot? Well, I’m still not sold on Obama, but then I’ve never not had him on the list. I like his econ advisor from the little I read. He likes comedy! (See Other interests)
He is dedicated to his profession. He knows how to speak:

…a prestigious New England preparatory school, Goolsbee became one of the most decorated competitive speakers in the country. In 1987, Goolsbee won the National Forensics League national title in extemporaneous speaking and finished second in original oratory with a speech on the SAT entitled “Right of Passage”

Think he may be Obama’s secret to his oratory ability?

He thinks deficits matter. He thinks companies have a morality problem:

The evidence shows that companies are particularly likely to raise prices when the government is footing the bill… It’s not your grandpa’s moral hazard anymore.

Also here he tackles the 529 savings plans problems.

He seems to be hangin’ with a crowd that thinks there is a problem with just focusing on tax rates as policy for moving an economy. Although he also seems to focus a lot on the internet and taxes. This appears to be his “thing”? In doing a quick look at some of his work, Obama’s current econ plan appears to be totally Mr. Goolsbee’s ideas. I have no problem with this. It suggests that with Obama, we would actually get people who’s qualifications actually match the job assigned. Though I feel confident with the top 3 dems we would see properly fitted personnel.