Brad DeLong



James Bradford DeLong, aka J. Bradford DeLong or Brad DeLong, is a New Keynesian and neoliberal (as in pro-free trade) economist who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the US Treasury Department under Bill Clinton and today regularly blogs about (duh) economics. When the Big One hit he was a prominent supporter of fiscal stimulus.

He is a staunch critic of the Wall Street Journal op-eds, Fox News, and Austrian School economics and has likewise spent time rebutting orthodox Marxist economics, particularly the labor theory of value. However he has acknowledged that Marx the academic, while making plenty of errors, also made some genuine contributions to economics, although he does not hold as high an opinion of Marx the ideologue.

While a supporter of NAFTA and other trade agreements that lead to deeper integration he has said that while NAFTA had net positive effects the results were also somewhat disappointing in terms of not creating as much growth as predicted. While he would support it again he also suggests there may need to be a new way of looking to creating more growth from trade deals.

DeLong is the originator of the term East African Plains Ape.