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Real-World Economics Review

The age of Doris Day…

Let’s not forget that she once played a union worker, in ‘The pajama game’. With the song ‘racing with the clock‘. Also, here a blogpost of mine about how in ‘The Age of Doris Day’ apt new institutions enabled everybody to work less and have better lives, in stead of a part of the population being entirely unemployed and miserable.

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Modern economics is sick

from Lars Syll Modern economics is sick. Economics has increasingly become an intellectual game played for its own sake and not for its practical consequences for understanding the economic world. Economists have converted the subject into a sort of social mathematics in which analytical rigour is everything and practical relevance is nothing … If there is such a thing as “original sin” in economic methodology, it is the worship of the idol of the mathematical rigour invented by Arrow and...

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DSGE models can be even worse in practice

from David Richardson There have been numerous postings on this blog that go the problems associated with dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models. Most of these posts have questioned their use in the hands of the high priests of the orthodox economics profession. For example, Lars Syll has said “DSGE models are simply — from both empirical and methodological points of view — not suited for understanding modern monetary economies” (28 Nov 2018). I have no argument at all with this...

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Economists have no ears

from Steve Keen Thomas Kuhn once famously described textbooks as the vehicle by which students learn how to do “normal science” in an academic discipline. Economic textbooks clearly fulfil this function, but the pity is that what passes for “normal” in economics barely deserves the appellation “science”. Most introductory economics textbooks present a sanitised, uncritical rendition of  conventional economic theory, and the courses in which these textbooks are used do little to counter...

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Inequalities, societies and “alternative facts”

from Ken Zimmerman There are inequalities and then there are inequalities. In any society, some members are taller, smarter, run faster, are better at math, build houses better, etc. than other members. In most societies these are not converted into inequalities in food, clothing, housing, wealth, and the other necessities for staying alive. And they have little effect on one’s status and prestige and power within the society. Durkheim wrote about it. It’s called “division of labor.”...

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