... and a few more

Seeing Lerxst's last post, I spent a few minutes looking at the CQ Moneyline database to see what economists have donated to the Obama campaign. The names of many friends and colleagues popped up, but there just aren't many economists whose names are familiar to those outside the profession. Among the "famous" economists who have given to Obama (famous in the sense that anyone with a Ph.D. would know their names) are Ray Fair, Christina Romer, and David Romer. Ray is the originator of the Fair Model, which is the granddaddy of macroeconomic forecasting models. Christina is one of the top macroeconomic historians, and David is author of the most widely used advanced macroeconomic textbooks.

(Christina and David are married, and they have a son named Paul. Another Paul Romer, roughly of David's age, is a prominent economic growth theorist. David says that when is asked if he is related to Paul Romer, he likes to reply "Yes, he's my son.")

The most surprising thing that came up in my brief search is that Larry Lindsey, formerly Bush's chief economic advisor, gave $1000 to Hillary in February. He also gave $1000 to Biden's campaign in November and $2300 to Fred Thompson's campaign last August. I think the only way to understand this bizarre constellation of donations is to note that he's currently CEO of an economic advisory group. The money for Hillary and Biden has nothing to do with Lindsey's preferences and everything to do with buying access to their Senate offices.