I recently participated in a panel discussion of this phenomenon at the American Economic Association annual meeting in Denver. An apparent paradox emerged from the discussion: the boom in popular economics comes at a time when the general public seems to have lost faith in professional economists, because almost all of us failed to predict, or even warn of, the current economic crisis, the biggest since the Great Depression.
在最近召开的美国经济学会丹佛年会中，笔者恰好参与了一场关于该现象的小组讨论。而小组成员们都意识到了某种矛盾现象：通俗经济学的兴起恰恰是与人们对专业经济学家的不信任同时出现的，因为绝大多数经济学家都未能预见（甚至仅仅是警觉）这场自大萧条以来最大规模的经济危机。