Evan Soltas asks the right questions. I am thinking here of Richard Feynman's biographical account of his own self-education through asking questions and then solving them that eventually led him to the horizon of his field. Evan seems to be thinking along those lines.
What are the questions and how best to go about answering them. Begin with a design problem and craft a design solution using appropriate instruments and data. There is no universally applicable method that solves all problems.
Different methods solves different types of problems and within these types, the appropriate tools have to be used appropriately, taking differences with the type into account.
A body of knowledge grows by pushing out the envelope. One point in undertaking a PhD dissertation is to add to knowledge of a field by proposing and defending an original thesis, for example.
In addition to novelty, the criteria are generally agreed upon as being formal consistency, empirical correspondence, simplicity of means, and pragmatism of results.
Most often, the objective to demonstrate new knowledge, but sometimes it is to develop a new method or a new approach. The question under discussion is whether existing methods are up to the task and if so, which are most applicable.
From the MMT point of view, the questioning doesn't go far enough, and therefore neither to the proposals. A new approach is needed and that is stock-flow consistent macro modeling as well as questioning conventional assumptions and exploring alternatives.
The positive thing, however, is that it is being recognized that the problem grew out of finance rather than economics so that economic models that lack a financial component are insufficient to the task.
1 comment:
Macroeconomics, like scholastic theology, commands far more intellectual resources than the value of its output merits. It generates few useful deliverables. The world would probably be very well served if most macroeconomists were encouraged to gravitate into other, more practical, reality-based, empirically minded, socially and institutionally aware and intellectually profitable sub-fields of their discipline. We can leave a few people remaining in macro to make sure everybody else's work at least conforms with the fundamental accounting identities - knowledge of which is about the only useful thing macro generates.
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