David Glasner — The Neoclassical Synthesis and the Mind-Body Problem

If you are interested in foundations of economics and economic methodology.

Nicely played.

Uneasy Money
The Neoclassical Synthesis and the Mind-Body Problem
David Glasner

Lars P. Syll — What is this thing called ‘capital’?

Cambridge capital debate revisited.

Macroeconomics textbooks discuss ‘capital’ as if it were a well-defined concept — which it is not, except in a very special one-capital-good world (or under other unrealistically restrictive conditions). The problems of heterogeneous capital goods have also been ignored in the ‘rational expectations revolution’ and in virtually all econometric work.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
What is this thing called ‘capital’?
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

See also Joan Robinson, "The Meaning of Capital," in Contributions to Modern Economics, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1978, pp. 114-125.

Jeff Madrick — Why Economists Cling to Discredited Ideas

This article appears as part of a special report, "What the Free Market Can't Do," in the Winter 2015 issue of The American Prospect magazine.

The American Prospect
Why Economists Cling to Discredited Ideas
Jeff Madrick

Philip Pilkington — Long Live Hydraulic Keynesianism: Krugman on Godley and Vernengo on Krugman

Phil captures some of the basic issues in contemporary economic debate in a short post. Well done.

It's the first time that Krugman enters the Post Keynesian debate and the Godley SFC approach as a guideline to guide empirical investigation wrt to actual context — and gets it wrong. Why he gets it wrong makes all the difference, and Phil calls him out on it. In doing so, he illumines the basic difference between the neoclassical, marginalist approach based on rationality and equilibrium and the Post Keynesian approach after Godley.

It was indeed the obsession with marginalism, rational agents and market equilibrium that drove out the far superior “hydraulic” approach to economics. Hydraulic approaches rely on stock-flow equilibrium outcomes rather than market equilibrium outcomes. As I have written before, the latter stinks of a determinism and a teleology that only exists in the minds of economists. As Krugman notes this whole belief system — for it is a belief system — is “at the core” of what economists are “supposed to know”. That Krugman says this with some degree of skepticism is refreshing indeed, because this is in my opinion the key problem with economics today that makes it less a framework for understanding the economy and more a doctrine based, ultimately, on an a priori, moral vision of man.

Yes!



Fixing the Economists

Long Live Hydraulic Keynesianism: Krugman on Godley and Vernengo on Krugman

Philip Pilkington

Douglas Weldone — Political Economy Trumps Macroeconomics

It is worth remembering that many of supposed macroeconomic problems are not intractable, the problem is as much one of political economy as of economics. This lead me to think that policies that take into account the wider politicial economy environment – and seek to change it – are more likely to succeed that policies which rely on traditional macroeconomic tools.

TouchStone
Political Economy Trumps Macroeconomics
Douglas Weldone

Lars Syll — How to re-establish economics as a realist and relevant social science

Lars schools the mainstream on the obvious. Why does this even need to be said.

Lars P. Syll's Blog
How to re-establish economics as a realist and relevant social science
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Vernengo on Krugman and the Keynesian neoclassical synthesis

Matias Vernengo calls Paul Krugman out on his neoclassical nonsense.

Naked Keynesianism
So? None of your conclusions follow from your arguments
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, University of Utah

See also:

Thoughts on Economics
Krugman Promoting Zombie Horror, Not SF Futures
Robert Vienneau