[Jeff Chandler]

What percentage of students are doing this?

[nmh]

"We have lost our optimism that the tools of economics can be used to manage the economy," Mr. Levitt said, "and we have moved to a much more micro view of the world. We can tell you whether labor unions raise productivity or stifle innovation or raise wages, but we are reluctant to judge whether the tradeoffs are good or bad."

yes, yes ... everything is relative. No proper judgement calls - that would spoil this LIBERALtarian utopia that will never be.

[HamiltonJay]

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!

[Sofa King]

...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?'"

[Carling]

Freakonomics is a very un-PC book. It was quite interesting. The Bill Bennett flap over abortions and their impact on crime was the result of him refering to a chapter from this book.

[twigs]

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?

[kalee]

ping

[longtermmemmory]

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.

[A. Pole]

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.

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.

[Sarastro]

Macro-economists' claims that their discipline is a science are way overblown. They haven't mastered mere description, never mind prediction. Their economic theories seem, coincidentally, to reflect their political views (rather than the other way around).

No analytical models of the real world capture anything near its complexity (if they did, they would be mathematically intractable). Therefore, no analytical models may ethically be used to make policy prescriptions, though that seldom prevents economists from trying.

I don't mean to imply that macroeconomics is a waste of time -- far from it. But they need to be far more modest about what they have accomplished.

Here's an example of good economic work: Kenneth Arrow's impossibility theorem. He proves that there can be no scientific algorithm to make objectively correct social choices that can meet a small set of innocuous "fairness criteria." (In plain English, people have different welfare preferences, and there's no scientific way to weigh them all on a single scale to reach the "best" social decision.) The implication of this is that social welfare choices must be sorted out by a political process, not a scientific one. This conclusion gives enormous support to democratic government over any form of totalitarian or centralized control.

In effect, Arrow proved conclusively that economists should not rule the world -- a conclusion that we can all rejoice in!

[JerseyHighlander]

This new approach to economics is the underlying reeason the Conservative Party of Canada and Stephen Harper won the election in Canada. It's the reason the Chicago School controls the Western Economies.

Economics students now have, from a single person or workgroup or company's perspective, an infinite data stream that no longer allows for the exclusion of contradictions in the data stream, because peers will have access to contradicting data.

You come to realize early on that any economist who stands up with a "grand scheme" is a sucker with an overinflated ego waiting to be shot down and ridiculed. Those grand schemers in Davos for WEF, in Stockholm for pollution credit exchanges, in Tunis for the Internet Governance UN conference, those Turtle Bay pinheads, the Brussels egomaniacs, the Beijing autocrats, The Damascus failures, they are the last of their breed, they will not be able to continue their strains of economic theory in the face of massive amounts of contradicting data streams. They are the high priests of a dying cult, shilling out their theories to strongmen and ruthless governments to make their daily bread because their psalms boxes are not refilling. They will soon join the panoply of disregarded gods, lost religions, and forgotten sagas.


There is a downside though, ruthless efficiencies through micro level gains in productivity, the future might not be any better with less sweeping grand schemes.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

The only new thing is the use of laboratory research -- similar to the way Behaviorists (Skinner et al) approached psychology in the 60's.

This research will probably lead to changes in several of the variables used in econometric modeling -- but the modeling will continue to advance. Mathematical modeling has grown along with the growth in computer power. Modeling (or theory building) used to be done using far fewer variables, and more human logic and intuition than computation. Humans used to be able to understand economic theories (whether or not they were right) -- no one really understands how the computer models work.

[paudio]

Mathematization of economics happened parallel with the increase of positivism in social sciences since Comte. The main idea is that there's a 'law' in social relation that applies everywhere, every time. This way, there's an 'objective view' that independent of one's reality.

The other end of the spectrum, of course, is the post-modern way of seeing things: there's no such thing as 'objective view'. Reality depends on each person's way of seeing things. It's not different in perspective. It's different reality altogether.

The 'middle road', actually offered by Karl Marx, with his 'realism'. He conceded that there's 'objective things' independent of our mind/view. These things, as well as the mechanism of one the relationships between one thing and another, can be observed and studied like molecular chemistry. However, people have different backgrounds, etc., that give them different perspective. Just like us looking at one object, but from different angles as we stand on different places. As a result, Marx argues that social sciences (inc. economics) should try to find social mechanism that exist in particular society if we want to understand and explain any phenomena in that society.

Unfortunately, to some extent Marx (and/or his followers) didn't really follow this practice of social sciences either. After all, they believe that in every society the workers are oppressed by the capitalist class; hence, workers need to unite and revolt.