Real-World Economics Review

from Asad Zaman Empiricism holds that observations are all that we have. We cannot penetrate through the observations to the hidden reality which generates these observations. Here is a picture which illustrates the empiricist view of the world: The wild and complex reality generates signals which we observe using our five senses. The aspects of reality which we can observe are the only things that we can know about reality. The true nature of hidden reality, as it really is, independent...

from Lars Syll In his history of experimental social science — Randomistas: How radical researchers are changing our world (Yale University Press, 2018) — Andrew Leigh gives an introduction to the RCT (randomized controlled trial) method for conducting experiments in medicine, psychology, development economics, and policy evaluation. Although it mentions there are critiques that can be waged against it, the author does not let that shadow his overwhelmingly enthusiastic view on RCT. Among...

from Edward Fullbrook Here is a passage from an article that appeared last week in The Guardian. With one day of trading to go, 2019 is on course to be one of the strongest in the history of financial markets after shares around the world racked up record after record in another barnstorming year. On Wall Street the Dow Jones industrial average has gone up almost 25% having reached record highs day after day, while the broader S&P500 is up 30% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq has grown 40%...

from Blair Fix I recently read David Graeber’s book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. If you’re not familiar, David Graeber is the anthropologist who wrote Debt: The First 5000 Years, a seminal book on the history of money and credit. In Bullshit Jobs, Graeber takes aim at pointless work. Graeber describes a bullshit job as: a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the...

from Dean Baker Recently, Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell reported on the negative reactions of college presidents to the idea of free public college. The context was a media dinner with a dozen college presidents, most of whom were leading non-flagship public schools, according to Rampell. The presidents were asked if they thought it was likely that the government would adopt free college along the lines proposed by presidential candidates Senators Bernie Sanders and...

from Lars Syll There really is something about the way macroeconomists construct their models nowadays that obviously doesn’t sit right. Empirical evidence still only plays a minor role in mainstream economic theory, where models largely function as a substitute for empirical evidence. One might have hoped that humbled by the manifest failure of its theoretical pretences during the latest economic-financial crises, the one-sided, almost religious, insistence on axiomatic-deductivist...

from Asad  Zaman When we think about epistemology (theory of knowledge), then we are doing meta-thinking. That is, we are thinking about thoughts people have, which they think is “knowledge”.  Because there are many many wrong ideas, and very few right ideas, we must learn to think critically. Unless we do so, our thoughts will be captured by the enormous amounts of fake news which circulates on social media these days. Thinking about thinking, or Meta-Thought, is very different from the...

from C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh Anyone who has been following the upsurge of protests across the country in the wake of the CAA-NRC moves of the government would have been impressed and inspired by the role played by young women. They have been forthright and fearless in articulating their concerns and demands, even in the face of overt repression by the state, and there is no doubt that they provide much hope for the future of the country. These young women have already...

James Dean with chat baker.

Dean Baker - Spoken Poetry - Aphorisms in Motion - Copyright © 2019 Please post a comment if you watched and enjoyed this. :) Book Title: Aphorisms In Motion Author: Dean Baker (writer/vocals) Visuals: TheGlitch Music: The Doors This video is strictly Copyright © 2015-2019 and not to be copied or distributed for profit or not for profit without the written consent of its owner Dean Baker. IG: DeanRavenBaker If you enjoy this spoken poetry, spread the word and let me know. Maybe it'll...