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from John Komlos and current RWER issue Cultural challenges are insurmountable The defective dominant ideology of neoliberalism characterized “by a huge overestimation of the wisdom of market processes,” has seeped into the popular culture to such an extent that it is difficult to make the citizenry understand that the best government is not one that governs the least.[1] It easy for market aficionados to label progressive politicians who aspire to improve the condition of the poor...

from Asad Zaman Launched in early 20th Century by Ragnar Frisch, econometric methodology was strongly shaped by the Cowles Commission (CC) in the 1960’s. The CC approach relied on structural equations, which embodied causal information known in advanced to the researcher. The goal was estimation of causal effects, and not discovery or assessment of the hypothesized causal structures. The oil shock of the 1970’s led to dramatic failures of macroeconomic regression models, leading to...

from Lars Syll In their quest for statistical “identification” of a causal effect, economists often have to resort to techniques that answer either a narrower or a somewhat different version of the question that motivated the research. Results from randomized social experiments carried out in particular regions of, say, India or Kenya may not apply to other regions or countries. A research design exploiting variation across space may not yield the correct answer to a question that is...

Over at Club Troppo, Nicholas Gruen links to an interesting (long) article on the relationship between the second and third US presidents (Adams and Jefferson). Adams comes out looking decidedly better, I think My comment: This is part of the general process of re-evaluation that has followed, with a long delay, the Civil Rights Movement. An extreme example is Calhoun, presented as part of the ‘Great Triumvirate’ in the traditional history, and now being cancelled everywhere. But...

As the 25th of April approaches, Australian attention is focused on Anzac Day, the anniversary of the disastrous landings at Gallipoli. But the rest of the world is looking at another, even more horrific, and closely related anniversary. On 24 April 1915, as the invasion fleet of which the Anzacs were part approached, the Turkish government began arresting Armenian leaders and intellectuals, the first step in a genocidal campaign which owuld ultimately claim at least a million lives....

from Blair Fix If you’ve ever taken Economics 101, then you’re familiar with its jargon. In the course, you probably heard the words ‘supply and demand’ and ‘marginal utility’ uttered hundreds of times. As you figured out what these words meant, you gradually learned to speak a dialect that I call econospeak. Like all dialects, econospeak affects how you express ideas. The vocabulary of econospeak makes it easier to express certain ideas (such as ‘market equilibrium’), but harder to...

from John Komlos Mainstream economics –as taught to well over a million students a year in the U.S. alone –is replete with implications that feed into structural racism.[i] That should not be misinterpreted to imply that economists themselves are racist.  Rather, the market fundamentalism they promulgate have the unintended consequence of providing ample justification for maintaining the economic status quo which privileges the well-to-do but finds most minorities at the lower end of the...

WEA Commentaries Volume 11, Issue 1  –    April 2021 download the whole issue Review of Internet Oligopoly: The Corporate Takeover of our Digital WorldMitja Stefancic  The puzzle of western social science Asad Zaman Taking the Dasgupta Review seriously (with an interview with Professor Partha Dasgupta)Mitja Stefancic A New Book on the Economics of Gift Stuart Birks interviews Ioana Negru US Government SpendingDean Baker Please click here to support the WEA...

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