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Excellent questions for which I have no good answers

A commenter on Brad DeLong's blog has a few questions for me, apropos of the snide opening line of a post I wrote a couple days ago:

Economist Brad DeLong, as part of his long-running campaign to persuade the world that journalists are flawed (and many are; unlike academic economists, who are right about everything and also smell great!) ...

Anyway, here are wood turtle's most excellent queries:

The burning issue is: exactly how does Justin Fox know that academic economists smell great?

Also, what kind of cologne does Brad DeLong wear? I'm sure that Justin Fox knows.

Finally, which academic economists smell the best- conservative, neoconservative, paleoconservative, liberal, or neoliberal? A ranking would be helpful.

I did have breakfast once, years ago, with Brad, but have no memory of any particular odor other than perhaps the smell of pancakes cooking at Kaffee Barbara. I've been to a couple of AEA annual meetings and can testify that things didn't smell bad there at all. But I'm afraid I have committed the classic mainstream-pundit sin of extrapolating grand conclusions from meager evidence. Thanks to the magic of the blogosphere, though, I can now ask for help. Comments from economists' spouses, friends, workout partners, etc. are all welcomed.

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  • 1

    OK, so we have it settled that Brad DeLong smells like food. Not surprising.

  • 2

    I have it on good authority that if you get DeLong mad enough, he reeks of "Victory" (similar to the fragrance "Napalm in the Morning".)

  • 3

    Robert Reich smells quite nice. I believe he wears Guerlain's Vetiver, or something like it.

  • 4

    Paul Lukasiak:

    Thanks for your informative observation. Exactly who is that "good authority?" HaHa. I will never make you tell.

    Just don't mention coir mats to him either, that really gets him going.

    I was kind of hoping he'll have another post about "collective action clauses" and that would really get me going again, but I think not.

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