by From Asad Zaman Preliminary Remarks: “The trouble is not so much that macroeconomists say things that are inconsistent with the facts. The real trouble is that other economists do not care that the macroeconomists do not care about the facts. An indifferent tolerance of obvious error is even more corrosive to science than committed advocacy of error.” From The Trouble with Macroeconomics (Paul Romer) Personally, I do not understand why indifference to error is worse than committed advocacy. For an illustration of committed advocacy of error, see postscript below on 70 years of economists’ commitment to a fallacious theory of supply and demand in the labor market. Furthermore, the problem is not confined to macro. Microeconomists are also dogmatically committed to utility maximization,
Topics:
Asad Zaman considers the following as important: depression, Keynes, teaching, Unemployment
This could be interesting, too:
Nick Falvo writes Women’s homelessness
Matias Vernengo writes Keynes’ denial of conflict: a reply to Professor Heise’s critique
Matias Vernengo writes Atonella Stirarti’s Godley-Tobin Lecture
NewDealdemocrat writes What real spending and the unemployment rate portend for the 2024 Presidential election (so far)
from Asad Zaman
Preliminary Remarks: “The trouble is not so much that macroeconomists say things that are inconsistent with the facts. The real trouble is that other economists do not care that the macroeconomists do not care about the facts. An indifferent tolerance of obvious error is even more corrosive to science than committed advocacy of error.” From The Trouble with Macroeconomics (Paul Romer)
Personally, I do not understand why indifference to error is worse than committed advocacy. For an illustration of committed advocacy of error, see postscript below on 70 years of economists’ commitment to a fallacious theory of supply and demand in the labor market. Furthermore, the problem is not confined to macro. Microeconomists are also dogmatically committed to utility maximization, when in fact this hypothesis about consumer behavior is solidly rejected by empirical evidence; see: The Empirical Evidence Against Neoclassical Utility Maximization: A Survey of the Literature
Understanding Macro: The Great Depression
Due to frequent headlines, there is a substantial public awareness of core macroeconomic issues like unemployment, trade agreements, exchange rates, deficit, taxes, interest rates, etc. However, even professionals are often ignorant of the intellectual battles which have shaped modern macroeconomics, since this is not taught in typical PhD programmes in economics. This article attempts to provide the history of ideas which led to the emergence of macroeconomics, since this is an essential background required for informed analysis of these issues.
Lord John Maynard Keynes invented the entire field of macroeconomics in response to the Great Depression in 1929, which could not be understood according to economic theories dominant until then. According to the classical economic theory, forces of supply and demand in the labour market would ensure full employment. Keynes starts his magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, with the observation that the economic theory cannot explain the long, persistent and deep unemployment that was observed following the Great Depression. Keynes set himself the goal of creating a theory which could explain wide fluctuations in levels of employment that he observed. He discovered that creating such a theory involved rejecting deeply held convictions, central to economic theory. read more