The latest essay in my “million mutinies” series says,
For mainstream economists, the financial crisis has produced a new intuitive model of the economy which has yet to be articulated in any formal theory.
Of course, I do not believe either the older textbook macro or the newer just-so stories. Read the entire essay. It is a sequel to the first essay and to the second.
Apr 16 2012
1. Ross Douthat speculates that technological advances could change us from civil societarians to meek subjects of an all-powerful state. 2. Chris Mooney talks about personality traits as determinants of ideology. I think that many people will walk away from this piece with the view that the difference between libe...
Apr 16 2012
Caro had a further epiphany about power in the early '60s. He had moved on to Newsday by then, where he discovered that he had a knack for investigative reporting, and was assigned to look into a plan by Robert Moses to build a bridge from Rye, N.Y., across Long Island Sound to Oyster Bay. "This was the world's worst i...
Apr 16 2012
The latest essay in my "million mutinies" series says, For mainstream economists, the financial crisis has produced a new intuitive model of the economy which has yet to be articulated in any formal theory. Of course, I do not believe either the older textbook macro or the newer just-so stories. Read the entire essa...
READER COMMENTS
Daniel Kuehn
Apr 16 2012 at 9:30am
Aren’t all the stories people don’t like “just so stories”? The people who see value in what you call a just so story as something that just needs to be worked out in more detail probably see PSST as a “just so story”.
I think what macro needs to recognize is that there are a lot of mechanisms at work in a complex system, and what we really need is an appreciation of all of the “just so stories” that seem to be accurately describing a piece of the elephant. We need to investigate each of these rigorously, put them all together, say “this is our best shot at describing all the different things that are going on”, and once we do that we’ll probably have a decent sense of this particular elephant…
…until the next big one comes along, and it will likely have a somewhat different set of characteristics.
Mark Little
Apr 16 2012 at 9:39pm
Excellent article. Thank you.
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