One of the most widespread myths in economics, but also in sociology and political science, is that game theory provides “tools” that can help solve concrete problems in these branches – especially in economics. Introductory and advanced textbooks thus often speak of the “applications” of game theory that are being made, giving the impression that […]
economics
Nowadays there is almost no place whatsoever in economics education for courses in the history of economic thought and economic methodology. The standard view among mainstream economists is that students shouldn’t think about what they are doing, but just do it. This is deeply worrying. A science that doesn’t self-reflect and asks important methodological and […]
Modern mainstream (neoclassical) economics relies to a large degree on the notion of probability. To be amenable to applied economic analysis, economic observations allegedly have to be conceived as random events that are analyzable within a probabilistic framework. But is it really necessary to model the economic system as a system where randomness can only […]
You ask me what all idiosyncrasy is in philosophers? … For instance their lack of the historical sense, their hatred even of the idea of Becoming, their Egyptianism. They imagine that they do honour to a thing by divorcing it from history sub specie æterni—when they make a mummy of it. Friedrich Nietzsche Nowadays there […]
“Ideas in which economists have reposed the greatest confidence have been proved wrong and therewith, not surprisingly, the responding policy. And this has happened under circumstances which admit of no really plausible explanation, rationalization, or alibi—things in which we economists are more than minimally accomplished. There was, to be sure, more than a suspicion of […]
Given the lack of consensus in existing empirical analyzes and the difficulties of making causal inferences from macro-level panel data analyzes, it remains an open empirical question how cutting taxes on the rich affects economic outcomes. We believe the question is best answered by looking at the effects of major tax cuts packages, as the […]
One of the limitations of economics is the restricted possibility to perform experiments, forcing it to mainly rely on observational studies for knowledge of real-world economies. But still — the idea of performing laboratory experiments holds a firm grip on our wish to discover (causal) relationships between economic ‘variables.’ If we only could isolate and […]
Sometimes everything comes together in unintended ways. That has happened to me this week. I am moving office tomorrow, and I am also moving home, and if that wasn’t enough, I received a call from a union I help out with advice who wanted some urgent work done. The major employer had presented a sort…
We have good reason to suppose that the scope of relevance of mathematics is very limited indeed in them social realm. For example, it can be demonstrated that not only the poor success rate of modern economics, but also the phenomenon of modern economists repeatedly making assumptions known to be wildly false, are due to […]