1
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
- [Christina] The most important thing
that I try to pass on

2
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is the sense that economics
is an empirical field,

3
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
then if you get
new empirical evidence,

4
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you're going to have
to change the way

5
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you think about the economy.

6
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I think being open to that

7
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is the most important thing
for a young economist to know.

8
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Economists -- not a group

9
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
with a lot of Marys,
Natashas or Juanitas,

10
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and that's caused
a lot of controversy.

11
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
However, what's often overlooked
are the actual female economists

12
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
who are pushing economics forward

13
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
by addressing real-world issues.

14
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Welcome to Women in Economics.

15
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
♪ [music] ♪

16
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I grew up in a family

17
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
where public policy
was discussed a lot.

18
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I was planning to be a lawyer,

19
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
so I was going to major
in Government.

20
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And as part of the Government
major at my college,

21
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you had to take
a year of Economics.

22
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I was about three weeks in,
and I was hooked,

23
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
like the government major's gone,
the lawyer's gone,

24
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I was in an Economist.

25
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Christina Romer
is a macro economic historian.

26
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
She takes the tools
of modern economics,

27
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
statistics, and data

28
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and applies them
to historical questions.

29
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
- [Narrator] Christie's researcher
agenda throughout her career

30
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
has focused
on a course set of topics

31
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
about economic fluctuations
and business cycles.

32
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
She's been asking and answering

33
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
fascinating questions
about our economy,

34
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
starting with her dissertation
as a graduate student at MIT.

35
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
There, she changed
her understanding

36
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
of how the economy
has grown over time.

37
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I think the questions
that came to me

38
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
were about monetary policy
and business cycles

39
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and the Great Depression.

40
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
- [Narrator] It was widely believed

41
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that government policies led to
less fluctuations and unemployment

42
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
after World War II.

43
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
However, the data before
World War II was unreliable.

44
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
- [Nancy] But Christie came up
with the ingenious insight

45
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that while you couldn't clean up
the historical data,

46
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you could fuzzy up
the more modern data,

47
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and that's exactly what she did.

48
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And when she did it, lo and behold,

49
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
all these differences
basically collapsed.

50
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
- [Narrator] Amazingly,
if she applied

51
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the old techniques to the new data,

52
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the pose WOrld War II economy

53
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
looked just as volatile
as the pre-World War economy.

54
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
This contradicted the consensus

55
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
on the role of government
stabilization policies.

56
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Her research rattled
the economic community.

57
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It made a splash.

58
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I remember one of the prominent
economist MIT,

59
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
his first reaction was,

60
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
"Well, I'd be very upset
about this if I believed it.

61
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So I'm not going to believe it."

62
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Throughout her academic career,

63
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Christine continued to challenge

64
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
her understanding
of the Great Depression.

65
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
As just one example,
most economists believed

66
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the Great Depression ended

67
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
because of higher
government spending

68
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and investment in public works.

69
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
She showed that the impact
of those policies

70
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
were relatively small compared to

71
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the monetary policy
changes taking place