Tag Archives: Economics

The pretense-of-knowledge syndrome in economics What does concern me about my discipline … is that its current core — by which I mainly mean the so-called dynamic stochastic general equilibrium approach — has become so mesmerized with its own internal logic that it has begun to confuse the precision it has achieved about its own world with the precision that it has about the real one … While it often makes sense to assume rational expectations for a limited...

The case for central bank independence is built on an intellectual two-step. Step one argues there is a problem of inflation prone government. Step two argues independence is the solution to that problem. This paper challenges that case and shows it is based on false politics and economics. The paper argues central bank independence is […]

(Photo via Flickr) Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action I realized after I posted it last week that it was my 200th links, which is a nice occasion to acknowledge and thank my colleague Cara Vu, who, despite being one of the busiest people I know, edits them and saves me from self-humiliation on a weekly basis. She catches between 8 and 200 mistakes in every one.And also thanks for reading. I really do appreciate the occasional emails, twitter shout outs, and...

Esther Duflo vs Elinor Ostrom While both authors subscribe to realism, they practise two types of realism. The realism supported by Duflo is akin to a naive ‘metrological realism’ … in which quantification is seen as merely mirroring reality within a margin of error, whereas Ostrom seems closer to critical realism and constructivism: the way we perceive and quantify reality is moulded by our cognitive maps and conventions. The rationales of the social...

Inequality and the future of captalism  [embedded content]

This is the way  [embedded content]

Summers and Stansbury only get it half right The new Keynesian school emerged from the synthesis, propelled by the invention of a slew of frictions and rigidities – staggered contract negotiations perturbing labor markets, “menu costs” of changing prices and wages, prices locked into inefficient levels by contracts, probabilistic price revision, monopsony power of firms in labor markets, on and on. In the process, any and all discussion of effective demand...

Les banquiers centraux sont les pompiers pyromanes Pour la première fois depuis l’après-guerre, les banquiers centraux sont confrontés à un problème contre lequel ils sont impuissants, le chaos politique. Les Etats-Unis étaient un acteur fiable, dont la devise était le pilier du système monétaire international ? Ils sont devenus imprévisibles, tandis que le rôle pivot du billet vert est remis en cause … Ce n’est pas tout. En maintenant des taux très bas...

On the irrelevance of economics I believe that as an economic theorist, I have very little to say about the real world and that there are very few models in economic theory that can be used to provide serious advice. However, economic theory has real effects. I cannot ignore the fact that our work as teachers and researchers influences students’ minds and does so in a way with which I am not comfortable. Can we find a way to be relevant without being...

Auch wenn nur wenige ÖkonomInnen aus dieser Epoche sich explizit zu einem aprioristisch-platonischen Wahrheitsbegriff bekannt haben mögen (eine Ausnahme bildet Ludwig Mises), erlangte die ohnehin von großem Selbstvertrauen getragene Eigendarstellung der frühen Neoklassik spätestens mit den 1930er Jahren eine neue Qualität, die den wesentlichen Inhalt zentraler neoklassischer Theoreme als unwiderlegbar deklarierte. So schrieb etwa Lionel Robbins in seinem tausendfach zitierten...