Greg Mankiw now chairman at Harvard's Economics Department.

Greg Mankiw is now the chair of Harvard's Economics Department. He assumed his post at the beginning of July succeeding Professor John Y. Campbell. Well I never expected Greg Mankiw to land the job (because of my own reasons) but hey, he's got it in his bag, hence what's the way forward? I'm looking at this issue at two angles. Firstly, how does his appointment mean for his future and then secondly, the future of the Econ dept at Harvard? Of course he's going to scale down on his teaching and other activities such as blogging to concentrate on his new job. He said this:

I will continue teaching ec10 and revising my favorite textbooks, but I will have to cut back on my other teaching and professional activities. In particular, over the next three years, I will blog less and travel less to give talks at other venues. I will be spending my time trying to make the world's best economics department even better

In this article in The Crimson former chairman John Campbell said "Both for teaching reasons and for the importance of [macroeconomics and finance] to research  ... we have made these two of our top field priorities,' Therefore will Mankiw be in a fit position to drive these two fields. Mankiw is a great economics I must say. He is one of the founders of New Keynesian Macroeconomics but this financial crisis has exposed economists, especially macroeconomists in that most of them failed to predict the coming of the crisis and don't seem to have the solutions. Of course one doesn't have to be a criminal to be an effective policeman. "Visionary" leadership is one which is needed at this kind of position. But can we expect that from Mankiw? His prestigious ec10 class was hit by a massive walkout by students and "occupied" by the Occupy guys because his teaching is biased towards the mainstream views which brought the world economy to it's knees and is resistant to other ideas in light of the financial crisis. His inertial to a rapid change of course in macroeconomics isn't good for the Econ dept. As a result of the great recession, a paradigm shift is needed in finance and macroeconomics (Harvard's two main fields) and Mankiw is showing early signs of not being in tune with reality. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman declared that e feared that most macroeconomics of the past 30 years to be "spectacularly useless at best, and positively harmful at worst". That's a strong statement coming from a renowned economist.

  Since he's a Romney advisor, is he going to go and work for Romney's administration in the event that Romney wins the US presidential election and is offered a post? Just saying. I don't have anything against Mankiw, like I said before , he is a great economist and I wish him all the best. On another note, I have been thinking about how far macroeconomics is going to change in the aftermath of the financial crisis? Are we going to be disappointed or not? What's going to be the catalyst in terms of original research which is going to signal a new direction for macroeconomics? It's a wait and see game.