by How economics has become a religion Economics today has — as we all know — become a “the model is the message” discipline. But as long as it does not seriously argue and assess the compatibility of those models and their real-world target systems, the belief that those models in any essential way enhance our possibilities to understand or explain what happens in our economies, is a belief for which there really is no other ground than belief itself. Even if no controls were available, it would be presumptuous to ignore the testimony of people who make economic decisions and observe and participate in economic life. To do so would be to make economics a religion rather than a responsible analysis of experience. Good instincts about a subject can be
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How economics has become a religion
Economics today has — as we all know — become a “the model is the message” discipline.
But as long as it does not seriously argue and assess the compatibility of those models and their real-world target systems, the belief that those models in any essential way enhance our possibilities to understand or explain what happens in our economies, is a belief for which there really is no other ground than belief itself.
Even if no controls were available, it would be presumptuous to ignore the testimony of people who make economic decisions and observe and participate in economic life. To do so would be to make economics a religion rather than a responsible analysis of experience. Good instincts about a subject can be developed only by contact with the phenomena studied. Unfortunately, attitudes in the economics profession discourage the use of information other than well-known data. Among these attitudes … is the belief that nothing is seen if one looks too closely, that the forest is missed for the trees. It is true that remote views are useful, that aerial photographs disclose forest diseases. But it is also true that to understand forests, you should know something about trees.