Sunday, July 20, 2014

Lars P. Syll — Macroeconomic quackery


Formalism (Lucas) v. empiricism (Summers)

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Macroeconomic quackeryLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

2 comments:

Matt Franko said...

Tom isnt this rationalism vs empiricism?

Rationalism: More formally, rationalism is defined as a methodology or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism

Or are you keying off of this: " “provision of fully articulated, artificial economic systems that can serve as laboratories ..."

to get to Formalism, ie they create and analyze their own version of an economy?

" A formalist, with respect to some discipline, holds that there is no transcendent meaning to that discipline other than the literal content created by a practitioner."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formalism_(philosophy)

I see a bit of both at work here perhaps...

Thru formalism they create their own fantasy world and then thru rationalism they reach their conclusions about this world which doesnt exist in reality...

Could be a combination...

rsp,

Tom Hickey said...

Rationalism works. I chose formalism in that the emphasis is on mathematization.