I realize that Krugman was being tongue in cheek in this work, but a lot of the work in theory-heavy areas of "mathematical" economics are similar exercises in obscurity and dubious scientific value.

Krugman, in one of his autobiographical essays, described economics as the field that people get into when they can't hack it in math, physics or some other high-rigor STEM field. Part of proving one's intelligence as a junior economics faculty member is doing a lot of mathematically-heavy fireworks and then moving on to "real" research that matters.

We can laugh at this one but what is not laughable is the huge resource cost in supporting an academic economics establishment (at least in the theory area) whose product is actually not that much different from this.