Is mainstream academic macroeconomics eclectic?
Simon Wren-Lewis | Professor of Economics, Oxford University
More on scope
Jason Smith, an American physicist interested in economics
Noahpinion
Situationalism in economic policymaking
Noah Smith | Assistant Professor of Finance, Stony Brook University. Noah has an undergrad degree in physics.
11 comments:
Lars Syll's rebuttal of the Wren Lewis framing position is very pertinent.
You need more than Toy mathematics stuck in a to get a handle on how an economic system works.
As Lars puts it: "just as his colleagues, when it really counts, Wren-Lewis shows what he is — a mainstream neoclassical economist fanatically defending the insistence of using an axiomatic-deductive economic modeling strategy."
Exactly. He's a paid up member of the establishment. Defending creditors against democracy.
Anybody else get the 'rather too much inference from physics' in all that.
Physics doesn't deal with self-referential entities that have learning capacity. Even biological analogues would struggle to deal with the way masses react.
According to the Evonomics folk, evolutionary theory is a more promising basis for social science, including econ, than natural science.
There is a summary article at Wikipedia on evolutionary economics, which arguably began with Marx.
See also
Kenneth Boulding's evolutionary perspective
Here is David Sloan Wilson's series on economics and evolution. See also David Sloan Wilson — A good social Darwinism [and much more]
"Anybody else get the 'rather too much inference from physics' in all that. "
Yup.
You ever hear this, Neil? Paul Davidson describes at around 15 min how Paul Samuelson says that if you're going to impose economics as a science you must impose the ergodic axiom (Samuelson wanted economics to be regarded--and respected--as a hard science like physics). Keynes rejected the ergodic axiom. Keynes' definition of uncertainty was that the future cannot be predicted on the probability distribution of the past. According to Keynes, the future is nonergodic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31wjPE-mUb4
Incidentally, Davidson eviscerates Samuelson's reputation as keeper of Keynes in the Appendix of his latest book, HE KEYNES SOLUTION The Path to Global Economic Prosperity. The Appendix is called Why Keynes’s Ideas Were Never Taught in American Universities. As a NYC Amazon commenter said, the appendix is worth the price of the book alone. Davidson says Samuelson claimed the title of keeping Keynes’ ideas alive after William F. Buckley Jr. in a flawed essay conflated Keynes with either Communism or McCarthy (can’t remember). Samuelson even claimed that his ideas were based on Keynes. Davidson describes how Samuelson never even read the book when he first made his statements, and cited a 1989 interview in which Samuelson said he never understood Keynes ideas to begin, they were too confusing, so he ignored them. Davidson calls Samuelson a 19th C economist.
Here is an Interesting note on Samuelson and math/ physics. No mention of Keynes as having influenced PS.
@Tom,
Davidson tells the story in his appendix. I tried to publish a portion of it, no luck. Too long. If you have a way of uploading the pdf of the Appendix so others can download it here at MNE, which I extracted from the Kindle version for my own use, email me and I'll send it to you. I assume you can see my email address.
The Appendix is 22 pages long, 11 pages in the pdf I made. Davidson relies on interviews that made by Colander and Landreth in the 80s for their 1996 book, "The Coming of Keynesianism to America."
Copyright issues on something that long.
I guess you could always buy Davidson's book used from Amazon, but I'd watch his U of C video first.
I could always send it to you privately. It's a great read!
MRW if you are interested on the topic I recommend digging "Lord Keynes" blog (http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com.es/)
He has written a lot about Davidson bastardization of Keynes and the (non)ergodicity of the system.
Thanks, MRW, but if I had time to read it, I would buy a used copy.
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