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from Lars Syll Modern economics has become increasingly irrelevant to the understanding of the real world. In his seminal book Economics and Reality(1997) Tony Lawson traced this irrelevance to the failure of economists to match their deductive-axiomatic methods with their subject. It is — sad to say — as relevant today as it was twenty years ago. It is still a fact that within mainstream economics internal validity is what really counts and external validity is only rarely discussed. Why...

from Peter Radford Robert Locke’s excellent discussion of the different perspective presented by a tacit-knowledge rather than explicit-driven driven enquiry into economic matters prompts me to reprise my understanding of the purpose of a business firm. Put briefly: a business firm exists to translate what is often called tacit knowledge in to what is called explicit knowledge. An alternative wording would be that firms take the ad hoc and various and make them into the codified and...

from David Ruccio Both Donald Trump and Eduardo Porter would have us believe the U.S. trade deficit is a serious problem—and that, if it can brought back into balance, jobs for American workers will be restored. Nonsense!   Yes, I know, Trump’s attacks on free trade did in fact resonate among working-class voters. And, as I have argued, there is clear evidence that that a tiny group at the top has captured most of the benefits of trade agreements and other measures that have allowed U.S....

Nice uptick, but subject to revision and at best indicating continued very modest growth well below the last cycle with a population that’s maybe 10% higher than it was 10 years ago: Highlights Volatility tied to low sample sizes is what the new home sales report is known for, proving its reputation again as September surged 18.9 percent to a 667,000 annualized rate. This is the largest percentage gain in nearly 28 years and is the highest level of the economic cycle, since...

From: Erwan Mahé 26 October 2017 I had no intention of writing before the ECB meeting today or, for that matter, afterward, given the already abundance of published opinion on the event. However, in light of the varied quality of the studies undertaken so far, I could not resist the temptation to return to my favourite topic, which is the study of the reaction function of central banks, especially, given the particular context faced by the European Central Bank. The only question we need...

Here’s the abstract of an article by Frank Schmidt in the Archives of Scientific Psychology: Governments often base social intervention programs on studies done by psychologists and other social scientists.Often these studies fail to mention other research suggesting that such interventions may have a limited chance of actually working. The omitted research that is not mentioned often shows that the behaviors and performances targeted for improvement by...

from Lars Syll When applying deductivist thinking to economics, neoclassical economists usually set up ‘as if’ models based on a set of tight axiomatic assumptions from which consistent and precise inferences are made. The beauty of this procedure is, of course, that if the axiomatic premises are true, the conclusions necessarily follow. The snag is that if the models are to be relevant, we also have to argue that their precision and rigour still holds when they are applied to real-world...

from Edward Fullbrook The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was the first book I ever read with pleasure.  I was 22. From age five to sixteen the school system had me classified as borderline mentally retarded.  My luck changed in my penultimate year of high school when a non-conformist English teacher gave me the chance to pretend I was not mentally deficient.  She also taught me how to write a sentence, after which, inflated with fantasises of normality, I taught myself...