Pointer from David Warsh
Pointer from David Warsh
Jul 1 2009
Reviewing Tyler Cowen's Create Your Own Economy, Ben Casnocha writes, when culture is free and a click away, as it is on blogs and Twitter and the broader Internet, we sample broadly and consume it in smaller chunks: "When access is easy, we tend to favor the short, the sweet, and the bitty. When access is difficult, ...
Jun 30 2009
I've repeatedly encountered the following social conservative meme, most recently in an argument over the Mark Sanford affair:We've got to stop acting like hypocrites are the worst thing in the world. At least hypocrites have moral standards; they're just not living up to them. All the war on hypocrisy real...
Jun 29 2009
READER COMMENTS
paul
Jun 30 2009 at 12:41pm
Thanks for the link to arjounals. I started reading “The state of Macro” by Olivier Blanchard. In his conclusion he notes,
“A macroeconomic article today often follows strict, haiku-like rules. It starts from a general equilibrium structure, in which individuals maximize the expected present value of utility, firms maximize their value, and markets clear. Then, it introduces a twist, be it an imperfection or the closing of a particular set of markets, and works out the general equilibrium implications. It then performs a numerical simulation based on calibration, showing that the model performs well. It ends with a welfare assessment.”
I think this nicely highlights the central problem with economics as currently practiced. The assumption of a welfare assessment is a necessary one to be rewarded by the institutions that really care about economics namely the state and the institutions that support the state, special interest groups, lobbyists, universities etc. I think that in a truly free market, the study of economics would look more like philosophy. Financial engineering would fill the gap for math weenies… ; )
Comments are closed.