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The Heritage Foundation critiques the CEA assessment of the stimulus. In WebMemo #2799, Dr. Campbell writes:

The CEA's method, in brief, compared a statistical forecast of the economy based on historical patterns (no stimulus) with the actual economic results in 2009. On this basis, it claims that there are 2 million more jobs in the economy than otherwise would have been the case. The CEA then concludes that this difference between this statistical forecast and the actual results were the effect of the stimulus.

...

Yet the CEA's benchmarks for unemployment and GDP numbers were completely arbitrary. If the Administration had used other economic forecasts, the results would not have been as impressive--in fact, some would have shown that the economy lost more jobs after the stimulus package was implemented.

One way to see the inadequacy of the CEA's method is to compare it with other economic forecasts made for 2009--before details of the stimulus plan were known. These forecasts were done by companies and agencies that have a direct interest in making the most accurate forecast possible so that businesses and governments can plan accordingly.

Well, I am confused on a number of counts.

• First, the author selects forecasts from well before the ARRA was passed -- October 2008 for the Global Insight forecast and January 2009 for the CBO (although that forecast was finalized on December 19). But, as I pointed out in this post one has to condition for shocks that occur between the time of the forecast for a baseline, and the ex post event. Nobody disagrees (I hope) that the consensus forecast deteriorated substantially between December and February, when the ARRA was finally passed (see the deterioration in the WSJ mean forecast in this post).
  
• Second, the CEA 2nd quarterly report clearly shows the estimatedhere and below), showing the counterfactuals undertaken by the other firms.
  
  Source: J. Calmes and M. Cooper, "New Consensus Sees Stimulus Package as Worthy Step," NYT (Nov. 21, 2009).
  CEA summarized the estimates in their report -- see Table 7, reproduced in this post, and below.
  Table 7: from CEA, "The Economic Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009: Second Quarterly Report," (January 13, 2009).
  impacts on GDP growth rates from Global Insight, as well as other Macro Forecasters. These implied increments to growth rates do not jibe with the the inferences drawn by Dr. Campbell -- that the impact on GDP is much smaller than CEA asserts when using forecasts from the other agencies and firms. In fact, the NYT compiled an interesting graph (reproduced
• On a minor point, for the life of me, I cannot figure out how the numbers reported in this figure from the article were generated. I only discovered this by trying to replicate the various series, and discovering that they're all nominal GDP figures. But the CEA reports did not provide nominal GDP figures, so I'm at a loss at figuring out how the graph was constructed.

Dr. Campbell continues:

The economic impact of the fiscal stimulus bill must be evaluated by projecting the economy without the stimulus bill and then introducing the fiscal stimulus to that same forecast. The CEA's report constructs and then analyzes a forecast of a downward spiraling economy. It runs a "what if" scenario in the wrong direction. Rather than analyzing the economic impact of the fiscal stimulus on a benchmark forecast, the CEA constructs a forecast and benchmarks it to what actually occurred.

I think I must've read a different study than she did. CEA did run a counterfactual approach -- it was a VAR approach. As I noted when I replicated CEA's VAR approach in this post, it's true the deviation from forecasted amalgamates fiscal and monetary policies and monetary and financial shocks, but that is a baseline one could use. But the resulting implied effect is consistent with the multiplier (or "model") approach used elsewhere in the study, so I'm not certain what the criticism is.

Dr. Campbell concludes:

The CEA claims that the stimulus bill created jobs in 2009, but this claim is based on its newly constructed "it would have been worse" forecast for 2009. When trillions of dollars are being spent, the American people deserve to have a true economic analysis done and should not waste money on meaningless reports.

I guess "true economic analysis" is in the eye of the beholder.