Posted on 01/30/2006 10:59:01 AM PST by Sonny M
Taking as a model the research techniques that Steven D. Levitt displays in his best-selling book, "Freakonomics," graduate students in economics are focusing on small insights about the economy rather than broad theories that explain how the overall system works. In doing so, they are withdrawing in effect from political debate.
The broad-brush approach was a defining characteristic of the economists who were shaped by the Depression. The younger generation has tried to shun prescriptions that seek to cure the economy's ills. Instead, they cast economics as a scientific inquiry, using mathematical models, for example, to explore the economy without becoming advocates for one solution or another.
Mathematical modeling tries to determine such things as rates of economic growth by plugging into computer models assumptions about inflation, hiring and the like. It is still the thrust of graduate training, but the students themselves are pushing for training in another form of exploration empirical research like that of Mr. Levitt, which relies on statistical evidence.
Mr. Levitt, a 38-year-old professor at the University of Chicago, analyzes data that seem to explain behavior why the crime rate has declined, for example and that is what a growing number of graduate students in economics want to do, according to a poll of 230 of them at seven prestigious universities.
"They don't see themselves as having political persuasions," said David Colander, an economic historian at Middlebury College, who conducted the poll and a similar one in 1987. "They see themselves as doing the best analytical-statistical work that can be done, better than in sociology and other social sciences. They are telling you what the options are, but not which option to choose."
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
What percentage of students are doing this?
They are telling you what the options are, but not which option to choose."
Wow... imagine that, giving options based on input, but allowing folks to make their own conclusions without dictating them to them.... What a concept... run in fear!! Run in fear!
If this actually becomes the norm, socialism and liberalism will die out in the realm of public debate. You can't introduce the illogical into a logical debate, after all.
"We have lost our optimism that the tools of economics can be used to manage the economy,"
GOOD! It was the misplaced 'optimism' of social engineers that created socialist hell-holes in the first place.
Free enterprise is the best way to prosperity.
labor unions raise productivity No
stifle innovation Yes
raise wages Temporarily
but we are reluctant to judge whether the tradeoffs are good or bad
You don't need to be a U of C professor to see the tradeoffs are bad.
...meanwhile, Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" is still right.
What was it that Ronald Reagan said? "An economist is someone who sees something in practice and asks, 'I wonder if that would work in theory?'"
Imagine economic freedom. Freedom of choice, all caused by rational thought fed objective data. Cool.
How much of this emphasis is because postmodern intellectuals are moving away from "metanarratives," universal or general theories, because they do not believe in "truth" outside of a specific context?
"You can't introduce the illogical into a logical debate, after all."
I'm not so sure about that, happens here all the time.
"We have lost our optimism that the tools of economics can be used to manage the economy,"
How many remmeber the verbal abuse, the condesencion, the opprobrium heaped on a great man Milton Friedman ini the late 60s and early 70s? The man whose work and theories was dismissed as ridiculuous bny the reigning orthodoxy then (the keynsians)0 is today the establishment voice! And I'm sure, he would suport a trend where political spectacles are taken out of cold factual analysis.
ping
NYT spin.
Desperate to try and find an opening for communism in eccomic studies.
Communism in eccomomics has about as much validity as the tooth fairy in brain surgery.
Probably every student taking an economics course.
Two years ago, I took Microeconomics and Macroeconomics courses. They were pretty exclusively presentations of formulae and the reasoning behind those formulae. No discussions of capitalism versus communism. I would've preferred that: memorizing formula after formula got boring, fast.
Actually, this is a good trend... just provide the facts, and let people make their own judgements based on them, rather than coming up with grand theories to match the facts (or, what happens more often, come up with facts that match the theories).
Economics is not a natural science. It is something closer to psychology, history or sociology. It is about what people do, what they think/believe/imagine, what they desire etc ...
Trying to reduce human beings to fake physical formulas is silly and pretentious.
Cheap labor stifles innovation: proved by the long history of ancient Egypt and other serf/slave based societies.
USA was the world leader in innovations at the time when the trade unions were the strongest.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.