David Brooks at the New York Times describes the history of modern economics as a 5-act play. We’re in act IV currently.
In The Wall Street Journal, Russ Roberts of George Mason University wondered why economics is even considered a science. Real sciences make progress. But in economics, old thinkers cycle in and out of fashion. In real sciences, evidence solves problems. Roberts asked his colleagues if they could think of any econometric study so well done that it had definitively settled a dispute. Nobody could think of one.
“The bottom line is that we should expect less of economists,” Roberts wrote.
Consider my recommendation of the column as a contribution to iconoclasm.
[...] for the time being at least, so far out of the mainstream as to be easily ignored. Considering the repeated failures of mainstream economics, that may be ripe for [...]
By: Goldman Sachs – “the other side” told persuasively « Tipsy Teetotaler on April 26, 2010
at 6:30 am