Sunday, October 16, 2011

Lucid is the eye of the beholder

Ed Glaeser celebrates Tom Sargent in a recent Bloomberg column (h/t my father).  The following statement really struck me:
Two of his lucid monographs, “Macroeconomic Theory” and “Dynamic Economic Theory,” have long been mainstays of macroeconomic education
I am guessing pretty much anyone who went to grad school in econ in the late 1980s was subjected to "Macroeconomic Theory."  It has indeed become a useful reference to me, but lucid is about the last word I would use to describe it.  Lucid writers (within the realm of their academic work) include Paul Krugman, Milton Friedman and....Ed Glaeser.  Michael Intriligator manages to make dynamic optimization intuitive.  I just don't see how Sargent gets in the same category.

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