Tag Archives: Economics

Economics — a science in need of a realist methodology What enables and yet constrains research? What is both medium and outcome of research? What do researchers reproduce without even knowing it? What is supposed to unite researchers but may divide them? What empowers researchers to speak but is never fully articulated? What is played out in the routine of research but can never be routinised? What is the responsibility of all researchers but for which...

Ainsi, la crise de 2008 a créé la surprise dans les rangs des économistes influents, qui croyaient voir le monde entrer au XXIe siècle dans le temps de « la grande modération » – c’est-à-dire la prévention des mouvements économiques erratiques grâce au pilotage « scientifique » des politiques monétaires … Cet épisode a sans conteste révélé une défaillance sévère du savoir économique … Pourquoi cette perte de confiance envers les analyses des économistes ? Nous vivons...

Christine Lagarde must have been reading my blog … European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde launched a stinging attack on the economics profession on Wednesday (17 January), accusing analysts of having “blind faith” in their models, which often bear little connection to reality. Speaking at an event entitled “How to Trust Economics” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the ECB chief also suggested that economists constitute a “tribal clique” whose...

RCTs in the field of development — a critical perspective .[embedded content]

Jon Elster and the dangers of excessive ambitions .[embedded content] Most mainstream economists want to explain social phenomena, structures and patterns, based on the assumption that the agents are acting in an optimizing — rational — way to satisfy given, stable and well-defined goals. The procedure is analytical. The whole is broken down into its constituent parts to be able to explain (reduce) the aggregate (macro) as the result of the interaction of...

Mainstream medieval inflation medicine Inflation peaked back in June 2022, only three months after the Fed started hiking interest rates. At that time, the Fed’s policy rate had risen just 75 basis points, and no one knew how much higher it might go. In fact, we have no evidence that monetary policy had any significant effect on the course taken by prices – certainly not before the June 2022 turning point, and not thereafter, either. In modern medicine, a...

Sraffian economics — a critique After being tasked with editing David Ricardo’s Collected Works in 1930, Piero Sraffa, with the assistance of Maurice Dobb, published them between 1951 and 1973. This work earned him the 1961 Söderström Gold Medal from The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. For the edition, Sraffa wrote an interesting and thought-provoking introduction. Its purpose was to demonstrate that classical economists based their theory on the concept...

In recent times, there has been a growing interest in institutionalist trends and research within economics. Traditional explanations and analyses have seemed to have little or no value. Abstract and unrealistic theories have increasingly been replaced by historically grounded ones. Institutional and structural elements in the economy are highlighted, replacing overly short-term and model-based variables. It is, therefore, not surprising that economists have become interested...

Why you shouldn’t day trade! .[embedded content]

How to become a Keynesian Until [2008], when the banking industry came crashing down and depression loomed for the first time in my lifetime, I had never thought to read The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, despite my interest in economics … I had heard that it was a very difficult book and that the book had been refuted by Milton Friedman, though he admired Keynes’s earlier work on monetarism. I would not have been surprised by, or...