Tuesday, September 08, 2009

How did economists get it so wrong?

Krugman's article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine is really worth reading.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:10 AM

    is typo intentional?

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  2. Also, some further comments in Krugman's blog:

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/a-few-notes-on-my-magazine-article/

    Krugman's characterization of the split between the beautiful theory and real world messy complexity seems right on the money to me. Everyone seems want to reduce problems in complex biological/social systems to punchy emotionally-resonant slogans. It's not the way biological, and therefore social systems work - the deeper you go, the more complexity you find. This seems to me to be a massive problem for economics in particular: an attempt at science which is continuous collision with the arational conglomeration of just-so beliefs that is politics. Most political beliefs cannot resist trivial attempts at falsification yet they're allowed to more-or-less drive economic theory. It's not going to work, reliably.

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