by What is behavioural economics? [embedded content] Great lecture! Yours truly especially appreciates Thaler’s excursion into the history of economics, forcefully showing the amazing extent to which mainstream economics suffers from severe amnesia. And trying to save it as e. g. Paul Krugman, arguing that rationality “in some parts of economics … seems to be a bit of a noble lie, useful as a guide for thinking as long as you keep your tongue firmly in your cheek” is, of course, nothing but flimflam. Real science can never be done with tongue in cheek. The economic and financial crises we’ve lived through lately and the fact that mainstream economics, with their models based on instrumental rationality assumptions, has had next to nothing to contribute to
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What is behavioural economics?
Great lecture!
Yours truly especially appreciates Thaler’s excursion into the history of economics, forcefully showing the amazing extent to which mainstream economics suffers from severe amnesia. And trying to save it as e. g. Paul Krugman, arguing that rationality “in some parts of economics … seems to be a bit of a noble lie, useful as a guide for thinking as long as you keep your tongue firmly in your cheek” is, of course, nothing but flimflam. Real science can never be done with tongue in cheek. The economic and financial crises we’ve lived through lately and the fact that mainstream economics, with their models based on instrumental rationality assumptions, has had next to nothing to contribute to understanding or explaining them, shows that mainstream economics is a degenerative research program in dire need of replacement. No matter how precise and rigorous the analysis is, and no matter how hard one tries to cast the argument in modern ‘the model is the message’ form, mainstream economists like Krugman do not push economic science forwards one millimetre since they simply do not stand the acid test of relevance to the target. No matter how clear, precise, rigorous or certain the inferences delivered inside their narrowly based ‘rationality’ models are, they do not per se say anything about real-world economies.