He’s been called “an insomniac with Tourrette’s syndrome,” a “super egghead” and “an adviser who was never on [the White House] staff,” and now Jonathan Gruber can add most buzzed-about economist to that list.
According to an analysis commissioned by the Economist, Gruber was the most influential economist on the Internet during the 90-day period that ended December 11, 2014.
The publication tasked the startup Appinions with analyzing the online influence of 500 different economists during this window of time.
Specifically, the company looked at the degree to which each economics professional was covered by mainstream media outlets, blogs and on social media.
Four-hundred-fifty of the 500 economists analyzed were selected because of their impressive RePEc ranks, which depend on the number of their published “research papers in economics.”
MIT economist and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber — who became utterly infamous and inescapable on the web for his recorded comments about the health care law’s “lack of transparency” and the “stupidity of the American voter” — soared to the top spot of the Economist’s list, despite the fact that his RePEc rank isn’t all that great compared to his competitors.
Whereas Gruber was ranked 244 on the RePEc list, some of the other economists in the top 15 of the Economist’s most influential list scored RePEc ranks as high as 34 (Ben Bernanke), 29 (Larry Summers) and 22 (Paul Krugman), all of whom possess well-known names.
Nevertheless, the mass media coverage of Gruber — which began shortly after the first video surfaced of him calling Americans stupid and Obamacare opaque on November 7 and mounted for several weeks — won the MIT economist the top prize.
Congratulations?
