Friday, July 23, 2010

Thanks very much to Shane in comments

Phil Mirowski, on the state of economics, who is always worth reading. Not sure if I agree with him on everything (the preoccupation of heterodox economists with arguing about methodology rather than going out and doing some economists is a real bugbear), but good stuff withal.

15 comments:

  1. (the preoccupation of heterodox economists with arguing about methodology rather than going out and doing some economists is a real bugbear)

    Is this a typo or not? Flashman's method of learning a foreign language comes to mind.

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  2. After reading the article several times I'm not sure what it is that he is actually arguing *for*.

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  3. The keening public? That is one of the few economic texts that would be improved in terms of style by a few equations.

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  4. Mirowski's article was disappointing. Not much in it. I'm still hoping he'll dumb down his markomata idea enough for me to understand it.

    Jamie Galbraith has a great little essay encouraging the heterodox to get on with it. Peter Dorman has a good one too, "What would a scientific economics look like?" (his answer is biology). My bet is that in the future the best economics will come out of the video game industry.

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  5. Hee, hee! Richard J. beat me to it. Looking forward eagerly to the report!

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  6. On going out and doing some economics, I agree. Barkley Rosser Jr. spoke to some of that [.doc] here.

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  7. Oh, I think I meant "Live and Dead Issues in the Methodology of Economics," available here.

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  8. It was a typo but I think I will let it stay. Everyone should go out and do a couple of economists once in a while.

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  9. Thanks again - Barkley is one of the guys I was thinking about on the PKT list - he's not particularly left wing as far as I recall, he's just a very heterodox economist.

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  10. (Jamie Galbraith is the guy who hetecons should really emulate - he's just spent the last ten years getting on with doing really useful work at the Texas Inequality Project)

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  11. Texas Inequality Project

    Now that's what I call matching the product to the brand.

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  12. "the preoccupation of heterodox economists with arguing about methodology rather than going out and doing some economists in is a real bugbear"

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  13. Now that's what I call matching the product to the brand.

    I think they're against, rather than for. (Cf. Tom Lehrer: "My cause is obscenity. I'm for it.")

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