Not terribly insightful. The question in the headline is not answered.
The entire last paragraph was a bunch of questions meant to invoke discussions and theories.
It has no ads, the author is already a well known economist and has nothing to prove for trying to be a “thought leader”.
I read this blog post as "thinking out loud on the internet". It's something I see done quite a bit in the econ blogosphere. Sometimes a post like this will prompt responses from other econ bloggers (Greg Mankiw, Tyler Cowen, etc.). Sometimes not. It's not meant to be an essay.