by From Asad Zaman In my article on “Education of an Economist”, I have explained how I gradually came to realize that all I had learnt during my Ph.D. training at Stanford University was false. I would like to make this more specific and concrete, by providing some examples. A leading example is a paper on Power and Taxes which I studied as a graduate student. But, let me start from the beginning. Leijonhufvud, in his classic “Life Among the Econ” explains how the priestly caste of the Math-Econ is the most admired and revered among the Econ. With a math degree from MIT, I was eager to join the ranks of the Mathematical Economists, the most prestigious among the alternatives facing me. But a few experiences soured me on this idea. I ended up with a degree in Econometrics, which also
Topics:
Asad Zaman considers the following as important: Uncategorized
This could be interesting, too:
Stavros Mavroudeas writes CfP of Marxist Macroeconomic Modelling workgroup – 18th WAPE Forum, Istanbul August 6-8, 2025
Lars Pålsson Syll writes The pretence-of-knowledge syndrome
Dean Baker writes Crypto and Donald Trump’s strategic baseball card reserve
Lars Pålsson Syll writes How economists forgot the real world
from Asad Zaman
In my article on “Education of an Economist”, I have explained how I gradually came to realize that all I had learnt during my Ph.D. training at Stanford University was false. I would like to make this more specific and concrete, by providing some examples. A leading example is a paper on Power and Taxes which I studied as a graduate student. But, let me start from the beginning.
Leijonhufvud, in his classic “Life Among the Econ” explains how the priestly caste of the Math-Econ is the most admired and revered among the Econ. With a math degree from MIT, I was eager to join the ranks of the Mathematical Economists, the most prestigious among the alternatives facing me. But a few experiences soured me on this idea. I ended up with a degree in Econometrics, which also makes heavy use of mathematics, under the illusion that this may be closer to reality. I learned much later that all the theory I studied at Stanford pertains to a fantasy world created by economists, which has no relationship to the real world. read more