Can We Revoke The NBER's Funding?

Not only does this paper have the longest title of any economics paper I have ever seen, but it could very well be the least intelligible one also.  Two things immediately jump out at me:

1) I know what these words mean individually, but this is like shotgun English.  Just put a lot of words in the gun and fire them out and see what you get.  I cannot even begin to make sense of either the title or the abstract.

2) The word 'economics' is not used a single time in the abstract.  That bothers me.  I can't put my finger on why, but it does.

Now I could write about how this paper makes economists look like idiots, or at least how we (did I just call myself an economist?) might have our priorities misplaced–after all getting monetary policy 'right' in African countries is much more important than determining whether a semi-martingale assumption is important when testing for distributional jump effects–but I think this paper presents a more fundamental question: where do I archive it, Economics or WTF?  Because it is an economics paper in the sense that it was written by economists and has some empirical tests, but I really think it belongs in the WTF? section since that was my first response after reading the abstract.  Maybe both is the way to go.  Regardless, don't bother spending $5 to read the whole thing.  You'll only have nightmares about omegas and epsilons.

Comments

[~R.]

I must admit, WTF? was not my first reaction. That would be 'Christ, what a douchebag.'