Jeffrey H. Dorfman, an agricultural and applied economics professor in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, is appearing in the pages of Forbes with regular economics opinion columns.
In a recent magazine column, Dorfman-who opposes government spending as a way to spur economic growth-argued that European countries such as Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal actually have not tried austerity to get their financial houses in order.
Therefore, their continued struggles, he argues, cannot be blamed on austerity.
“Austerity can indeed work if a country is willing to try it,” he wrote in Forbes. “Trying austerity means actually cutting government spending, not just slowing the growth in government spending.”