Talk:Edward Lazear/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: JBchrch (talk · contribs) 16:32, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t think this article is ready to qualify as a GA and I am going to boldly quick fail it, although I would understand if the author wanted a second opinion. I am commenting on the state of the article as of signature time, which can be retrieved here.

The article does not achieve neutrality. Too much of its emphasis is about the achievements of the subject and the praise he has received. The article does not mention the reception of his work among his peers or the criticism the subject may have received. For a career economist who has introduced seemingly new ideas, has been involved in the policy response to the financial crisis and had very distinct political leanings, it would be very surprising to me if the subject was universally praised.
Much of these problems rely on the fact that the article’s sources are not neutral. The vast majority of the sources are either publications by the subject himself, obituaries, or CVs and promotional press releases. Neutral and independant secondary sources are very much needed. Only six refs (4, 5, 18, 19, 28 and 38) out of 38 are secondary, neutral and are not obituaries. I see that Lazear’s paper are pretty high impact, so it should be easy to find reviews and secondary sources. An example would be Oyer, Paul; Schaefer, Scott (May 2020). "Personnel Economics: Hiring and Incentives" (PDF). NBER Working Paper Series No. 15977. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. doi:10.3386/w15977.
There are a number of "praises" that I was not able to verify in the cited sources. Examples include As Chairman, he was the chief economic advisor to President George W. Bush, His 1995 book, Personnel Economics, was a seminal work, In a transformative paper in the American Economic Review, His study also found interesting findings including the fact.
I am concerned about § Role during the financial crisis, and especially about the passage As the chief economic advisor to President Bush, he joined the White House economic team that orchestrated the policy response to the financial crisis and that restructured the financial system. Lazear's team developed the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 which provided the first rounds of economic stimuli intended to boost the United States economy in the face of unprecedented shocks to the financial and housing sectors. This passage is not sourced, and seems to contradict two standard narratives about the financial crisis, i.e. that the US government made the conscious choice to "save" the existing financial system rather than restructure it, and that its response was primarily engineered by the Bernanke/Geithner/Paulson trio. For instance, he is mentioned only once in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report and not mentioned at all in Tooze, Adam (2018). Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. Penguin. JBchrch (talk) 16:32, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]