. Now, Reagan certainly was no authority when it came to economics, but in this case, I think Trump could have learned a thing or two from him …
economics
An examination of the contributions of famous mainstream economists reveals no clear indication that their work produces rigorous and successful explanations or predictions of real-world phenomena. The situation in physics is markedly different. There, the application of mathematics has often yielded both rigorous and successful explanations and predictions. Of course, the material world is fundamentally […]
Serious question. In your opinions, dear readers, which is a more accurate measure of an economy: nominal GDP or purchasing power parity? I lean towards PPP myself, as I’ve traveled so much (65 nations and counting) I’ve internalized what the local value of a currency can buy versus what a dollar can by at home. […]
I started my undergraduate studies in economics in the late 1970s after starting out as an Arts student in the early 1970s studying philosophy, politics, history, anthropology and statistics. The Vietnam War movement and other things interrupted my first years of studies and it wasn’t until the Federal government introduced the National Employment and Training…
Each capitalist, Marx noted, has an ambiguous relation to the workers. On the one hand, she wants the workers she employs to have low wages, since that makes for high profits. On the other hand, she wants all other workers to have high wages, since that makes for high demand for her products. Although it is […]
Well, if we are to believe most mainstream economists, models are what make economics a science. Economics is uniquely model-oriented among the social sciences. This stems from its history, its emulation of natural sciences like physics, and its pursuit of universal, rigorous explanations based on minimal principles. Mainstream economists seek to explain social phenomena by […]
The methodological structure of mainstream economics often relies on axioms and theorems that are tautological by design, which severely limits their informational content. A prime example is modern expected utility theory. Its core weakness lies in the minimal constraints placed on individual preferences; this extreme flexibility allows the theory to be reconciled with virtually any […]
The rational expectations hypothesis presupposes — largely for reasons of internal consistency — that agents possess complete knowledge of all relevant probability distributions. When economists attempt to incorporate learning into these models, it is always in a very restricted sense. Nothing genuinely unanticipated ever occurs; instead, learning is reduced to a mechanical process of updating […]
There are several reasons for the insularity of economics, most importantly the different epistemological cultures of the various social science disciplines and the power inequalities between them. First, the theory of action that comes with economists’ analytical style is hardly compatible with the basic premise of much of the human sciences, namely that social processes […]
Fackföreningsekonomen Daniel Lind och ekonomiprofessorn Lars Calmfors har under det senaste året haft en animerad diskussion om forskningen kring ‘monopsoni’ och ‘lägstalöner’ i Ekonomisk Debatt och Affärsvärlden. En central tvistefråga i diskussionen mellan Lind och Calmfors gäller lägstalönerna i Sverige. Lind hävdar att höjda lägstalöner inte med nödvändighet behöver leda till färre jobb. Han menar […]