View source for Tyler Cowen

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[[Category:People|Cowen]]
[[Category:George Mason University Economics Department]]
[[Category:Libertarians|Cowen]]
{{DES | des = A professional, second-generation libertarian selected by the [[Charles and David Koch|Kochs]] as head of the [[George Mason University Economics Department]]. | show=}}
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Tyler is brilliant, smug, and a leading Koch tool.  His job as an economist seems to be more to maintain a drumbeat of propaganda than to do any research of significance.  If anybody has any evidence of the significance of his work (such as status by numbers of citations) I'd be interested to hear it.

Cowen generally adopts denialist tactics for economic positions his masters oppose; if you cannot refute it legitimately then spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt.  (FUD)

Cowen (and Tabarrok) run a very popular, high-volume blog "Marginal Revolution".  It's full of obvious shout-outs to the libertarian faithful (such as "Markets in Everything") and links to the latest libertarian propaganda.  It links to innumerable Fortean-like factoids with no real significance.  Analysis tends to run towards nattering criticism with very little committing to any position.  But some leads from there are very useful or interesting: Cowen is well characterized as an infovore and popularizer.  That's his good side.  To quote an anonymous commenter at [http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/did-risky-mortgage-lending-cause.html Noahpinion]:

"To read Tyler Cowen is to understand that there are two sides to Dr. Cowen, the very bright quasi-prodigy who has seems to have trouble feeling empathy (maybe something on the autism spectrum? Maybe mild sociopathy?), but has good mind when it comes to thinking differently and having an interesting perspective. Then there's the Tyler GMU/Mercatus Center side of Tyler where huge amounts of Koch brothers money keeps the paychecks coming and there's an implicit, if not explicit, agreement to push research that essentially amounts to, "Gov't programs and regulations, especially those meant to benefit the poor or protect the environment, are the root of all of America's economic problems." Tyler's trouble with empathy (and his libertarian beliefs, which are likely linked), make him a good fit for Mercatus/GMU."

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
Upton Sinclair

[[Paul Krugman]] says: "within each subfield [of economics] everyone knows who the top guns are".  Tyler is only tops in his subfield of pandering to plutocratic class warfare.  He might also be at the top of the field of studies of economics of support of the arts, but isn't that part of the same thing?
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