<jupyter_start><jupyter_text>Who Can Tell What Harald Uhlig Said Six Years Ago in Front of 60-Plus Witnesses?Yes, it is <NAME> blogging once again. Once again, some of the plain people of the internet who wish me ill tell me I need to go and read <NAME>—presumably to make me ill.&nbsp; Should Har<NAME>hlig Be Lead Editor of the _Journal of Political Economy_?And I do. And it does: **<NAME>**  on why Harald Uhlig deserves to still be lead editor of the _Journal of Political Economy_:>The _J[ournal of ]P[olitical ]E[conomy]_ advisory board (<NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>, and <NAME>, all good friends and great economists, so my pain here is deep at having to criticize their action) carefully say nothing about the tweets, media coverage, and protest. They cite instead the accusation of discriminatory conduct in a classroom setting. Now, such conduct is a very serious charge...Which Cochrane then dismisses:>But this account of events does not hold water. Ba, now a professor at U.C. Irvine, was sitting in—not taking for credit—a class in 2014, six years ago. At the University of Chicago, there was always the issue for classes that meet on Mondays, how do you reschedule the class that would normally take place on Martin Luther King day? It was always a mess...One might think that one sucks it up: plans for the fact that there is a holiday.Or one might think that one would make the holiday class up during reading period, if one has failed to plan one's syllabus according to the university calender. And one might think this is not a problem unique to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: that it applies to Washington & Lincoln's Birthday, Memorial Day, and Thanksgiving as well. But, apparently, that is not what University of Chicago economics professor <NAME> did. **<NAME>** :>@haralduhlig: I sat in your class in Winter 2014:>1. You talked about scheduling a class on MLK Day>2. You made fun of Dr. King and people honoring him>3. You sarcastically asked me in front of everyone whether I was offended**chitownprof** : "I was one of the 60+ fellow PhD students in that course. Everything you say is true. Uhlig had to reschedule a class and suggested the following Monday. A classmate said it was MLK day, to which he looked for you (the only Black student), and asked: 'YOU don't mind, do you?' And, to be clear, at the time MLK was a University of Chicago observed holiday in which classes were cancelled."   **<NAME>** : "I was in the same class with Bocar and each and every word is true, this happened exactly as he described it."   **<NAME>** : "For the record: similar comments were repeated in class this year"   **<NAME>** : "Yes, I have heard HU also said the same thing this year, although perhaps without a black student to single out and humiliate. It also gives lie to the idea he's criticizing BLM bc of how much he loves MLK and peaceful protest."   **fluffynuffy** : "Uhlig makes weird MLKjr Day 'jokes' every year in his classes apparently. This is probably acceptable yet bad free expression. But calling on black students specifically to ask how they feel about this isn't free expression at all."Ah. So it wasn't that Harald Uhlig had failed to plan for MLK Day. It was that he had made an outside commitment during what was supposed to be his lecture time, and wanted to reschedule the class he wanted to miss for MLK Day. The "mess" is one created by Uhlig's scheduling outside commitments during class time. Yet somehow Cochrane does not find space to say this.Cochrane continues:>...In that discussion, Harald said something that Ba found offensive—that much is undeniable. What "fun" did Harald make of Dr. King? Precise words would help. Clearly in this interaction the tone fo voice—whether Harald's inquiry as to offense was "sarcastic" or well-intended—mattered as much as what was actually said. Yes, this merits investigation, to the extent that one can investigate comments made in classes six years ago reported via tweet. >But the JPE, on Friday, was clearly responding to Harald's tweets, not just this accusation, and the JPE's contrary assertion a poor excuse.  There is no way on this green earth that a tweet made on Thursday about a comment made in class six years ago leads to being fired from the JPE on Friday, absent a mob demanding just that head for previous tweets about defunding the police.  An allegation of misbehavior in class would justify suspending Harald from teaching classes, maybe.>I spent much of my last few years of teaching afraid that I would say something that could be misunderstood and thus be offensive to someone.  Many of my colleagues report the same worries. It is not good for open and honest communication in the classroom if a tweet about a comment six years ago can destroy you. Yes, plain people of the internet. You have made me ill. Again. Satisfied?&nbsp;  Fear of ReportersSo to recover my equilibrium, let's talk about <NAME>'s Fear of Reporters. Immediately after the last quote above, he continues:>I also learned the hard way, don't talk to reporters who are out to destroy you, and that  includes anyone from the _New York Times_ or the _New Yorker_. Compare the _Times_ article to the unedited transcript of Uhlig's interview . I think Harald just learned another sharp lesson.Here are the paragraphs in the _New York Times_ article from Harald Uhlig's email interview: **<NAME>** & **<NAME>** :>[Uhlig] said in an email interview on Tuesday night that his “flat earther” comparison “appears to have caused irritation” but disagreed with critics who say his comments “hurt and marginalize people of color and their allies in the economics profession; call into question his impartiality in assessing academic work on this and related topics; and damage the standing of the economics discipline in society.” The reference to the Klan, he said, was a case where “I chose an extreme example” to make a point about free speech.>“Discrimination and racism is wrong,” <NAME> wrote in an email. Later, he added: “I would love to have more black economists (or is it ‘Afro-American economists’?) among our undergraduate students, Ph.D. students and faculty. It is my impression that the good ones are highly sought after. We also have very few American Indians among our colleagues. We need to find good way to change these numbers.”I genuinely did not see why Cochrane thinks Uhlig has a beef here.&nbsp; "We Should Have a Recession... Pounding Nails in Nevada..."But then I remembered the moment when I first concluded that <NAME> had gone bats--t—that he has simply completely lost it. It was on December 23, 2008, when I read a Bloomberg News article by **<NAME>** : ><NAME> was steaming as word of U.S. Treasury Secretary <NAME>’s plan to buy 700 billion in troubled mortgage assets rippled across the University of Chicago in September.... During a lunch held on a balcony with a view of Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, Cochrane, son-in-law of Chicago efficient-market theorist Eugene Fama, and some colleagues made their stand. They wrote a petition... collected 230 signatures. Republican Senator <NAME> of Alabama waved the document as he scorned the rescue. When Congress rejected it on Sept. 29, Cochrane fired off congratulatory e-mails. The victory was short-lived. Lawmakers approved the plan four days later, swayed by what Cochrane calls a pinata of pork-barrel amendments. “We should have a recession,” Cochrane said in November, speaking to students and investors in a conference room that looks out on Lake Michigan. “People who spend their lives pounding nails in Nevada need something else to do.”Now we need to look at some data. So we need to start by initializing our environment:<jupyter_code>%matplotlib inline

# ensure graphs show up inside rather than
# outside the notebook

# initialize libraries

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib as mpl<jupyter_output><empty_output><jupyter_text>Now we can grab the time series for the share of nonfarm workers in America in residential building—the people "pounding nails". Let us look at this share each year from 2000 to 2012 in October, before cold weather in the north has started to shut down construction:<jupyter_code>pounding_nails_df = pd.read_csv('https://delong.typepad.com/files/2020-06-16-pounding-nails-in-nevada-3.csv')
slice_df = pounding_nails_df[(pounding_nails_df['month'] == 10) & 
                 (pounding_nails_df['year'] > 1999)  &
                 (pounding_nails_df['year'] < 2013)
                 ]
format_dict = { 'construction_share': '{0:,.2%}'}
slice_df[['date','construction_share']].style.format(format_dict)<jupyter_output><empty_output>
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