I’m glad to see somebody other than me wondering what the real effects of the stimulus have been. Stanford economist John Taylor muses:
It’s been nearly a year since the stimulus package of 2009 was passed. Unfortunately most attempts to answer the question “What was the size of the impact?†are still based on economic models in which the answer is built-in, and was built-in well before the stimulus. Frequently the same economic models that said, a year ago, the impact would be large are now trotted out to show that the impact is large. In other words these assessments are not based on the actual experience with the stimulus. I think this has confused public discourse.
He concludes:
…in my view, the models have had their say. It is now time to look at the direct impacts using hard data and real life experiences.
Past time, I’d say.
