Peter Radford — Why Mainstream Economic Models Make Little Sense

My criticism of the use of models in economics is then not one of a denial of the value of models. It is directed at the selection of them. More to the point it is directed at the severity of the exclusion of zones of our experience that fall outside of our theoretical study because those zones are less tractable to our modeling technique. We have become monotheistic in our beliefs. Polytheism is frowned upon.

This is despite one of the great lessons of evolution: that diversity of approach gives the greatest chance of the location of solution. Economists have limited their options by reducing their subject to that set of issues most easily modeled according to the discipline’s self-referential code of modeling. And, further, they describe the problems they set out to solve in such a way as to produce results from their tests that conform to a prior code of acceptability.

So the code of modeling limits the usable technique, and the code of acceptability limits the range of problem. This duality then combines to define the discipline. Economics thus becomes defined as the subject that theorizes about problems tractable to the preferred technique.…

Evonomics
Why Mainstream Economic Models Make Little Sense
Peter Radford