Real-World Economics Review

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from Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan Despite the global dominance of capitalism, growth rates continue to trend downward. Mainstream economists blame the slowdown on various ‘distortions’, but as this animation by Elvire Thouvenot shows, the reality is quite different. Capitalists seek not more income per se, but greater power-through-redistribution, which they achieve by strategically stymying growth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTpanudMToA

from Lars Syll Taking into account the methodologies that support some policy practices that favour inductive reasoning and randomized control trials of impact evaluation (RCTs), there is a controversy around the utilization of these attempts to build experimental programmes or policy intervention … As the decision-making policy process in the real world relies on institutional factors that may be different elsewhere, the methodology based on RCTs does not provide a credible basis for...

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from Malgorzata Dereniowska Call for Papers The advent of digital economy creates new challenges for businesses, workers, and policymakers. Moreover, business prospects for artificial intelligence and machine learning are evolving quickly. These technologies have transforming implications for all industries, businesses of all sizes, and societies. The digitalisation of economic activities calls for a deep reflection on the forces that will shape the future of the global economy. Aims of...

from Maria Alejandra Madi Against a rationalist top down approach to policy making, the evidence-informed policy and practice has rapidly evolved in the last two decades. In this line of research, a new book What Works Now? Evidence-informed Policy and Practice has been edited by Annette Boaz, Huw Davies, Alec Fraser and Sandra Nutley.  It offers not only a synthesis of the role of evidence in policy making but also an analysis of its use in recent economic models and practices in the UK,...

from Lars Syll Well, if we are to believe most mainstream economists, models are what make economics a science. In a Journal of Economic Literature review of Dani Rodrik’s Economics Rules, renowned game theorist Ariel Rubinstein discusses Rodrik’s justifications for the view that “models make economics a science.” Although Rubinstein has some doubts about those justifications — models are not indispensable for telling good stories or clarifying things in general; logical consistency does...

Willian Nordhaus can’t keep his “Nobel Prize” because he doesn’t have one. Alfred Nobel never set up a prize for economics because he recognised that it is not a science – not even a “dismal science” – and that most of the research has little to do with the real world, being founded on ideas which are palpably untrue. What Nordhaus has is a Swedish Banker’s prize for promoting neo-liberal ideas about money for the benefit of the world’s super rich. They call it the “Nobel Prize” despite...

from Lars Syll Nordhaus’s transgressions are immense. His ‘damage function’ which he uses to estimate global warming damage is incorrect and uses data that has nothing to do with climate change. Despite this, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses his model to advise governments about the economic impact of global warming. Nordhaus and other mainstream climate economists certainly have a lot to answer for. Their thinking has seriously delayed action to avert damage done...

from David Ruccio The American Dream is dead. Long live the American Dream! Let me explain. The official American Dream, the one that has been produced and disseminated at least as far back as the transition from the farm to the factory (in other words, since the late-nineteenth century), lies in tatters. Americans have long been encouraged to believe that everyone gets what they deserve—and, with equal opportunity, those who start at the bottom have a real chance of working their way to...