Tag Archives: conventional economics

Public non-market production makes up a quarter to a half or more of all economic activity among advanced democratic nation-states. Yet the public economy’s ability to function on behalf of the populace as a whole is seriously imperiled in many western democracies, and particularly jeopardized in the United States. The surging influence of mainstream economics has been a prime factor in the degradation of the public domain over the last several decades – a phenomenon that James Galbraith...

Here's a quote that would make Lars Syll retch: Because DSGE models start from microeconomic principles of constrained decision-making, rather than relying on historical correlations, they are more difficult to solve and analyze. However, because they are also based on the preferences of economic agents, DSGE models offer a natural benchmark for evaluating the effects of policy change.- MathWorks: Modeling the United States Economy "... based on the preferences of economic agents, DSGE...

The Vice President of the European Central Bank, Vítor Constâncio, gave the opening speech – Developing models for policy analysis in central banks – at the Annual Research Conference, Frankfurt am Main, on September 25, 2017. Last time I heard Constâncio speak in person, in Florence 2015, he was in typical Europhile central bank denial. He thought the Eurozone was fine, a great success given the low inflation, inferring that the ECB’s conduct had something to do with that. He didn’t talk...

Includes Stiglitz quote, "there is no invisible hand."Lars P. Syll’s BlogRational expectations — the triumph of ideology over science Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Pramit Bhattacharya quote.  Double significant since it is a signal of rising criticism of the profession coming from outside the Anglo-American world that is presently dominant. Hopefully, this is a sign that this domination of ideas and methods will not spread and will be balanced soon. Lars P. Syll’s BlogSeven sins of economicsLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Yet there’s a logic — however absurd — to it. It’s a case of income maximization gone extreme. Repealing healthcare will maximize incomes for healthcare providers, Congressmen, lobbyists, pharmaceutical companies. And repealing healthcare will maximize incomes for households, by lowering taxes. Never mind that it shrinks life expectancy, which is to say: never mind the long-term benefits of such investments — in this paradigm, all that matters is income, right now. Thus, the overarching...

The epistemological  and logic problems are not due to either models or their assumptions but rather misinterpreting what a model says about the world realisitically. Models are necessarily simplifications, since their purpose is to encapsulate as well as explain. The probems arise typically in assumptions about the application of models as accounts of real events.  A major issue is over-generalizing by taking a model that illustrates a special cases and extending its scope to other...

Jason Smith makes a key observation here that many miss. Science is inherently a skeptical enterprise where conclusions are tentative on both forthcoming empirical findings and new explanations that challenge existing ones, which they may replace if they provide a better explanation in the view of the scientific community. "Firmly held beliefs" has another label — dogma. The dogmatic approach is opposite of the scientific one. Of course, this doesn't mean that fringe views are to be...

If mainstream economists had thought and behaved differently after 1980, then arguably the world would not be in its current state of disarray, and much of the social and environmental dislocation that we have witnessed over that time-span would not have occurred. In a nutshell, these economists uncritically accepted as true the false analyses, promises and prescriptions of neoliberal ideology. The destructive outcomes of their attempts to implement those prescriptions were greatly...

Weekend reading on economic and political economy. Phil always has interesting things to say as a philosophical economist or economic philosopher.American AffairsUtilitarian Economics and the Corruption of ConservatismPhilip Pilkington