Economists Crack Itself

Last week there were professors Eijffinger and Van de Klundert in The Times with a critique of the CPB. The Times headlined opportunistic, "chief economist cracking CPB. I can in any case difficult to understand how economists think these two make mistakes.

Eijffinger and Van de Klundert make first a comment that is factually inaccurate: "The Central Planning Bureau (CPB), the next two cabinets 29 billion euro cut in view the sustainability gaps, the account of the crisis for future generations down impose ". Moments later, they claim: "The way the agency then the discussion on sustainability is driven, is misleading. It does not all at once. "

But the CPB has never claimed how fast the sustainability gap must be eliminated. DNB, the Study Group on Budgetary and some political parties all have views on how fast the sustainability gap must be eliminated, without CPB.

Eijffinger and Van de Klundert criticize the CPB, not all aspects of aging in mind to include in the calculations, "CPB downplays the benefits of aging and gives no balanced view of this problem long term." Future generations inherit The current generation of production potential in the form of capital, intangibles and knowledge. Even with the advance of technology development for future generations better off. "