tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2761684730989137546.post4463867921872571480..comments2024-03-29T02:19:19.866-04:00Comments on Mike Norman Economics: Noah Smith — A serious proposal for undergrad econmike normanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03296006882513340747noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2761684730989137546.post-6165157736926838772014-06-01T11:03:12.107-04:002014-06-01T11:03:12.107-04:00The problem with economics is neither math nor mea...The problem with economics is neither math nor measurement. It's the assumption that "the economy" is a separate entity ("machine") that can be studied independently of social, political and legal institutions that affect it deeply, including matters that don't easily lend themselves to quantification. Non-institutional economics is barren and should be discarded after so many failures and such obvious limitations.<br /><br />Then there is the systems approach, which has pervaded the rest of science but not economics — as in complex adaptive systems subject to reflexivity and emergence.<br /><br />further this is the excessive "flattening" from the assumptions of methodological individualism, representative agents, rational choice theory, utility maximization, etc. which model an ideal domain that is not inhabited by actual human beings. <br /><br />These assumptions assume that human behavior is an amoral stimulus-response mechanism, which is a holdover from Skinnerian behaviorism. Psychology and social science have moved on. Economics needs to move on, too.<br /><br />These are matters that will be evident to reasonably sane and aware people, even young people without a lot of life experience — like many if not most people taking Econ 101 today. Their reaction to the course material presented in Econ 101 will predictably be WTF?Tom Hickeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08454222098667643650noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2761684730989137546.post-62713879933128641702014-06-01T09:07:26.472-04:002014-06-01T09:07:26.472-04:00Right. Focus on the really difficult things like ...Right. Focus on the really difficult things like calculating unemployment rates. You take the data, fudge it up, add a sprinkle of ideology and voila! You teach them early, teach them often how to measure, analyze and frame the discouraged, marginally attached and the officially unemployed. <br /><br />Next up inflation. <br /><br /><br />Can't be any worse than current Econ 101 which is the equivalent of the Book of Genesis and Creationism, pure philosophy and ideology without any basis in reality. <br /><br />Smith's proposal is probably dangerous territory to tread initially. Empirical measurement and analysis of the real world, if you want to teach orthodoxy and gain adherents, is a huge threat. What is measured, how it is measured, and why forces the ideological/philosophical decisions to be exposed at the outset instead of teaching the conclusions first then only obliquely hinting at the assumptions with the implication that it's too complicated a formula, laced with nuance and widely agreed values that you don't need to understand until you too have been steeped in economic culture and thought tradition for decades. <br />Ryan Harrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04815033054435303399noreply@blogger.com