The latest issue of Econ Journal Watch features the second round of my debate with Donald Wittman. Here’s me; here’s Wittman.
The latest issue of Econ Journal Watch features the second round of my debate with Donald Wittman. Here’s me; here’s Wittman.
Aug 4 2005
Many economists hold the view that constitutions don't affect policy. The argument goes roughly like this: "If most people want to do X, no sentence on a musty piece of parchment is going to stop them." Even if this argument is correct, however, constitutions might work anyway. How? By changing what people want. L...
Aug 3 2005
Mahalanobis quotes Peter C.B. Phillips and Donggyu Sul, the fastest learning countries are China, India and the East Asian group. Remarkably, China has experienced over four centuries of base trajectory OECD growth in the last 52 years taking it to year 1917 levels on the OECD trajectory. India and the East Asian grou...
Aug 3 2005
The latest issue of Econ Journal Watch features the second round of my debate with Donald Wittman. Here's me; here's Wittman.
READER COMMENTS
James
Aug 4 2005 at 5:23pm
I find two of Wittman’s remarks to be rather interesting with regard to his empirical methodology. On p. 194 he writes,
which seems entirely confused. If Wittman can’t justify in advance some theory about what conclusions would be warranted from the possible brain activities that might be observed, why does he expect anyone to believe that such a test is even relevant to his hypothesis?
In a footnote at the end of the same page, he writes,
Ignore for the moment the evidence for or against this restatement of his position, and also his remark cited on p. 176 in Caplan’s essay that “voter rationality and consumer rationality should be tested in the same way and compared.” If this is really Wittman’s position, why do his proposed experiments, especially 4 and 5, seem to test the position Caplan attributes to him, that voters are at least as rational as consumers?
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