Several econ bloggers have had things to say over recent days about the distinctions between mainstream and heterodox economics. It’s a discussion topic that carries a cast iron guarantee of raising the blood pressure of everyone involved. It’s one I’ve blogged about several times previously, but not for […]
On Thursday Noah put up a brief post on the Market Priesthood. It relates the story of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, of Freakonomics fame, meeting David Cameron, of Coalition Government fame. Levitt and Dubner tried to persuade Cameron that health care was just like any other part […]
Yesterday Noah Smith discussed whether economists’ ideas and arguments have much of an influence on policy and practice. He used an edited version of a famous quote from Keynes as his jumping off point. He then considered whether we can credibly claim that any living economist has significant […]
Debates over the demarcation of different schools of economic thought are by no means new. Taxonomic disputes break out sporadically. Whether “mainstream”, “orthodox” and “neoclassical” economics ever have been, are, or could be synonymous is a question that has exercised several authors of a philosophical turn of mind. […]
… the actions of economists today bear on the life chances of the world’s population far more substantially than do the actions of the members of most other professions. George DeMartino Replication is an activity that doesn’t attract enough attention, enough credit, or enough effort in the social […]
The way in which economic agents form expectations about the future is one of the most important issues in economics. All economic theory has to take a position on the matter, whether it is discussed explicitly or the treatment is left implicit. For three decades now the rational […]
Over at Noahpinion last week a post on the role of maths in economics generated plenty of comment.* This followed the award of the “Nobel Prize” in Economics to Shapley and Roth for work that is, in almost anyone’s book, highly mathematical. Noah Smith identified a number of […]
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