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Adam Ford
F L I N T O I D
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/business/13view.html?ex=1373601600&en=d29d44dcc70127bf&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
IN the months to come, John McCain and Barack Obama will be vying for the support of various voting blocs. It is safe to say, however, that one group won’t get much attention: economists.
David G. Klein
The American Economic Association represents only a small fraction of 1 percent of the electorate. In every election season, we economists expect to be largely ignored, and, unlike many of our other forecasts, that one often turns out to be right.
But suppose it were otherwise. Imagine that those running for office tailored their economic positions to attract the experts in the field. What would it take to put the nation’s economists solidly behind a candidate?
On many issues, from universal health insurance to increased taxes on the rich, economists do not speak with a single voice. But on some issues we do. Here is an eight-plank platform designed to attract a majority of economists. It is based on discussions I have had with my colleagues — call them focus groups, if you’d like — and polls of my profession:
SUPPORT FREE TRADE Economists are nearly unanimous in their support of an unfettered system of world trade. Here, Senator Obama lags behind Senator McCain. Senator Obama’s bad-mouthing of Nafta and his opposition to free-trade pacts with Colombia and South Korea make most economists cringe.
Many economists would go even further than Senator McCain has suggested by, for example, repealing antidumping laws. The ostensible purpose of these laws is to prevent foreign companies from selling in the United States at prices below fair value, but the law’s notion of “fair” rarely makes sense. In practice, these laws are little more than an excuse for special interests to shield themselves from competition.
OPPOSE FARM SUBSIDIES Economists like free markets, a principle that applies to agriculture as much as any good or service. Again, Senator McCain has the lead. Senator Obama’s endorsement of the recent $300 billion farm bill, his support for domestic ethanol subsidies and his opposition to imported sugar ethanol may bring votes from farmers, but economists view these policies as a burden on taxpayers and consumers.
LEAVE OIL COMPANIES AND SPECULATORS ALONE With the stunning rise in oil prices, both presidential candidates have been tempted to demonize market participants. Senator McCain has complained about the “obscene profits” of oil companies and called for a “thorough and complete investigation of speculators.” By contrast, most economists see nothing more sinister than the forces of global supply and demand at work. There is little benefit, and potentially much harm, in the candidates’ populist finger-pointing.
TAX THE USE OF ENERGY Senator Obama wins a point by opposing a summer gas tax holiday, a McCain proposal that economists greeted with derision. Most economists advocate increased taxes on energy products. The recent response of consumers to higher gas prices — including the increased use of mass transit and greater purchases of small cars, scooters, and even bicycles — demonstrates that the price mechanism is the most reliable way to reduce energy consumption and to curtail a variety of driving-related problems.
RAISE THE RETIREMENT AGE Like both presidential candidates, most economists recognize that Social Security faces a long-term problem. Senator Obama says he wants to fix it by extending the payroll tax to high incomes. Senator McCain opposes tax increases and wants the Social Security system to include personal accounts, but he has avoided proposing specific benefit cuts needed to make the numbers add up.
Some economists endorse Senator Obama’s tax hike, and some endorse Senator McCain’s personal accounts, but a much greater number would increase the age of eligibility for benefits. As Americans live longer, we need to redefine old age — a theme that should resonate with Mr. McCain, who is 71.
INVITE MORE SKILLED IMMIGRANTS As part of their embrace of globalization, economists are more open to immigration than is the general public. Admittedly, unskilled immigrants raise some potential problems: They may depress wages for Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder, exacerbating the rise in inequality, and they may overburden the social safety net. By contrast, skilled immigrants promote economic growth, especially among poorer Americans, and pay more in taxes than they get in government benefits. The more, the merrier.
On this issue, economists very clearly practice what they preach. Many of the best economists at top American universities were born abroad.
LIBERALIZE DRUG POLICY Many economists marry their support of economic freedom with a similar support of personal freedom. Drug policy is a case in point. A 2006 poll of professional economists asked whether the United States should legalize marijuana. Those in favor outnumbered those opposed more than three to one.
RAISE FUNDS FOR ECONOMIC RESEARCH The government subsidizes economic research through an arm of the National Science Foundation. The amount of money is relatively small — measured in the millions, not billions — and spending has been about flat in inflation-adjusted terms over the last decade. If Senator McCain or Senator Obama wants to endear himself to economists, there is no easier way than by promising an extra few million dollars to improve our understanding of how the economy works.
You might view this policy as nothing more than a way to buy a few votes. Perhaps you view economists as mere mortals, as tempted as anyone else by special interests. Maybe you would regard more funding for economic research as not very different from the billions thrown every year at farmers.
If you are that cynical, I won’t try to dissuade you. |
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Sun Jul 13, 2008 8:51 am |
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Public D
F L I N T O I D
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What if economics addressed environmental and societal needs?
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/74/The_Economics_Textbook_of_the_21st_Century.html
At the forefront of economics, major changes are happening. And many of them are changes for the better. The old economics view of the world, in which everyone acts purely in his or her own self-interest, in which free markets are the solution to almost everything, has been abandoned.
The list of economics Nobel laureates in the twenty-first century reflects these changes. It is largely made up of scholars who have worked outside the traditional Rational Economic Person, free market paradigm. The work of Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith deserves special mention even in this distinguished list. They created almost single-handedly the burgeoning discipline of experimental economics. Standard economics merely assumes that people act in a particular way. Kahneman and Smith actually tested how people really do behave. Many of the assumptions economists make turn out to be wrong in important ways.
But there is a problem, and a very big one at that. Most economists continue to try to shape public policy as if very little has changed and that the old view of the world remains generally valid. Got a problem with inflation? Just fix the money supply. Want to develop out of poverty? Just privatize all industries and pull down trade barriers. These answers are routinely trotted out regardless of the evidence. And the evidence is often starkly different from the theory. Look at trade: with the sole exception of the first country to industrialize, Britain, no country has developed successfully without protecting domestic industries from foreign predation.
The problem stems from the way economics is taught. For many of the very best students, a course in economics has become almost indistinguishable from a course in the math department, wholly abstracted from reality. A friend of mine has a world-wide reputation in physics. A few years ago, he got interested in economics and looked at some of the advanced textbooks and journals. I warned him. He was still appalled. The proliferation of math, with “theorems” and “lemmas” on almost every page, totally astonished him. “But I haven’t had to prove a theorem for at least 20 years. Physics is judged on how well your theory explains the real world, not on whether you can do clever math – all of us can,” he fumed.
Most students are fed not on esoteric math but on the standard textbooks. But these have, if anything, gone backwards in recent years. Aimed at the mass market of US community college students, they have dumbed down the subject to a terrifying degree.
I have in front of me the 1967 edition of Richard Lipsey’s Introduction to Positive Economics. This, along with Paul Samuelson’s textbook, was the best seller for many years. It is not aimed at geniuses, just ordinary, regular students, “designed to be read as a first book in economics.” Of its 861 pages, only 32 contain any math, and even that is of the simplest possible kind.
Yet it is full to bursting with really interesting examples of real world behavior. Yes, here is the basic model showing how in a free market, price can adjust to bring supply and demand into balance. But here, too, is an immediate counter-example, of great practical importance, discussed at length. Indeed, it has its own separate chapter. What happens if supply can’t be increased quickly, if it takes time to respond to price changes? This is true, for example for most agricultural markets – trees take time to grow, even chickens need five months before they can start to lay eggs.
Lipsey shows, simply and clearly, using only diagrams, how the free market might work very badly in this case. His chapter summary, printed in bold, states: “in the unstable case, the operation of the competitive price system itself does not tend to remove any disequilibrium; it tends rather to accentuate it.” Careful, practical study is needed on a case-by-case basis to see if a free market is likely to lead to stable or unstable behavior. The crude policy advice that markets always work is simply not given house room, even in a textbook for the ordinary first year student.
So why are the textbooks not being re-written, not just to bring back the insights of the word-rich, math-poor texts of the 1960s, but to incorporate the real advances which have been made in economics in recent decades? Until I was drawn into the textbook world, this puzzled me.
A couple of years ago, I was approached by someone from a leading academic publisher. He was, he explained, their very top man across the whole of the sciences. His remit included economics. This sounded interesting. What did he have in mind?
What the commissioning editor had in mind was very exciting. He wanted an entirely new textbook, to incorporate the really interesting advances in the subject over the past 20 years or so.
The editor, who already had a best-selling economics textbook of the standard kind in his stable, understood that at some point in the future all existing textbooks will be redundant. The new generation of textbooks will contain the economics of the twenty-first century, not that of the twentieth (or even the nineteenth!) which the present ones do.
He was anxious that one of his rivals would get there before him, and bring out an innovative textbook which would scoop the pool and be hard to dislodge from its number one slot. So he realized that his company would have to innovate and bring out a completely new textbook. Was I interested? It sounded like a dream. But like most dreams, it was too good to be true.
The editor faced a dilemma, which he articulated clearly. His problem was that the market – in this case the market for textbooks – is already occupied by the incumbents. They might ignore almost all that has gone on in economics in the past 20 years, they might be guilty of dumbing down, but they are there. And their publishers and authors use every trick to make it stay that way. For example, top textbooks routinely have over 10,000 multiple choice questions helpfully provided on a web-linked site. Teachers don’t even have to think about making up the questions, they are all provided.
So we have a situation in which products with inferior qualities – containing lots of old-fashioned economics – are preventing products which are superior from entering the market. The barriers to entry which they have erected are very hard to breach. In simple economics, this shouldn’t happen. Consumers are supposed to have perfect information, so they should choose the new rather than the old. But the real world just doesn’t work like this. Most students are now never told this, and they never get to choose – except by voting with their feet and dropping economics altogether.
And this was exactly the editor’s dilemma. He knew that at some point the market will look completely different, that the new will eventually oust the old. But he had no way of knowing when this would be. In the meantime, any single attempt to enter the market with a new-style economics text would be likely to fail, unable to break the lock on the market which the current textbooks have.
We corresponded on this and talked. Eventually, the editor said he would go ahead on the basis that no more than ten percent of the total material could be the new economics, the other 90 percent would be the old. But I just couldn’t do it, I couldn’t be part of disseminating a wrong-headed view of the world which leads to so much bad policy advice. I didn’t blame the man. He was thoughtful and anxious to do good, but faced commercial imperatives. So the textbook of twenty-first century economics is still waiting to be written.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004571.html |
_________________
http://www.toomuchonline.org/index.html
http://www.hr676.org
http://www.pnhp.org/publications/the_national_health_insurance_bill_hr_676.php |
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Sun Jul 13, 2008 10:26 am |
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Ryan Eashoo
F L I N T O I D
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Great article Public D, thanks for passing it along...
quote:
Public D schreef:
What if economics addressed environmental and societal needs?
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/74/The_Economics_Textbook_of_the_21st_Century.html
At the forefront of economics, major changes are happening. And many of them are changes for the better. The old economics view of the world, in which everyone acts purely in his or her own self-interest, in which free markets are the solution to almost everything, has been abandoned.
The list of economics Nobel laureates in the twenty-first century reflects these changes. It is largely made up of scholars who have worked outside the traditional Rational Economic Person, free market paradigm. The work of Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith deserves special mention even in this distinguished list. They created almost single-handedly the burgeoning discipline of experimental economics. Standard economics merely assumes that people act in a particular way. Kahneman and Smith actually tested how people really do behave. Many of the assumptions economists make turn out to be wrong in important ways.
But there is a problem, and a very big one at that. Most economists continue to try to shape public policy as if very little has changed and that the old view of the world remains generally valid. Got a problem with inflation? Just fix the money supply. Want to develop out of poverty? Just privatize all industries and pull down trade barriers. These answers are routinely trotted out regardless of the evidence. And the evidence is often starkly different from the theory. Look at trade: with the sole exception of the first country to industrialize, Britain, no country has developed successfully without protecting domestic industries from foreign predation.
The problem stems from the way economics is taught. For many of the very best students, a course in economics has become almost indistinguishable from a course in the math department, wholly abstracted from reality. A friend of mine has a world-wide reputation in physics. A few years ago, he got interested in economics and looked at some of the advanced textbooks and journals. I warned him. He was still appalled. The proliferation of math, with “theorems” and “lemmas” on almost every page, totally astonished him. “But I haven’t had to prove a theorem for at least 20 years. Physics is judged on how well your theory explains the real world, not on whether you can do clever math – all of us can,” he fumed.
Most students are fed not on esoteric math but on the standard textbooks. But these have, if anything, gone backwards in recent years. Aimed at the mass market of US community college students, they have dumbed down the subject to a terrifying degree.
I have in front of me the 1967 edition of Richard Lipsey’s Introduction to Positive Economics. This, along with Paul Samuelson’s textbook, was the best seller for many years. It is not aimed at geniuses, just ordinary, regular students, “designed to be read as a first book in economics.” Of its 861 pages, only 32 contain any math, and even that is of the simplest possible kind.
Yet it is full to bursting with really interesting examples of real world behavior. Yes, here is the basic model showing how in a free market, price can adjust to bring supply and demand into balance. But here, too, is an immediate counter-example, of great practical importance, discussed at length. Indeed, it has its own separate chapter. What happens if supply can’t be increased quickly, if it takes time to respond to price changes? This is true, for example for most agricultural markets – trees take time to grow, even chickens need five months before they can start to lay eggs.
Lipsey shows, simply and clearly, using only diagrams, how the free market might work very badly in this case. His chapter summary, printed in bold, states: “in the unstable case, the operation of the competitive price system itself does not tend to remove any disequilibrium; it tends rather to accentuate it.” Careful, practical study is needed on a case-by-case basis to see if a free market is likely to lead to stable or unstable behavior. The crude policy advice that markets always work is simply not given house room, even in a textbook for the ordinary first year student.
So why are the textbooks not being re-written, not just to bring back the insights of the word-rich, math-poor texts of the 1960s, but to incorporate the real advances which have been made in economics in recent decades? Until I was drawn into the textbook world, this puzzled me.
A couple of years ago, I was approached by someone from a leading academic publisher. He was, he explained, their very top man across the whole of the sciences. His remit included economics. This sounded interesting. What did he have in mind?
What the commissioning editor had in mind was very exciting. He wanted an entirely new textbook, to incorporate the really interesting advances in the subject over the past 20 years or so.
The editor, who already had a best-selling economics textbook of the standard kind in his stable, understood that at some point in the future all existing textbooks will be redundant. The new generation of textbooks will contain the economics of the twenty-first century, not that of the twentieth (or even the nineteenth!) which the present ones do.
He was anxious that one of his rivals would get there before him, and bring out an innovative textbook which would scoop the pool and be hard to dislodge from its number one slot. So he realized that his company would have to innovate and bring out a completely new textbook. Was I interested? It sounded like a dream. But like most dreams, it was too good to be true.
The editor faced a dilemma, which he articulated clearly. His problem was that the market – in this case the market for textbooks – is already occupied by the incumbents. They might ignore almost all that has gone on in economics in the past 20 years, they might be guilty of dumbing down, but they are there. And their publishers and authors use every trick to make it stay that way. For example, top textbooks routinely have over 10,000 multiple choice questions helpfully provided on a web-linked site. Teachers don’t even have to think about making up the questions, they are all provided.
So we have a situation in which products with inferior qualities – containing lots of old-fashioned economics – are preventing products which are superior from entering the market. The barriers to entry which they have erected are very hard to breach. In simple economics, this shouldn’t happen. Consumers are supposed to have perfect information, so they should choose the new rather than the old. But the real world just doesn’t work like this. Most students are now never told this, and they never get to choose – except by voting with their feet and dropping economics altogether.
And this was exactly the editor’s dilemma. He knew that at some point the market will look completely different, that the new will eventually oust the old. But he had no way of knowing when this would be. In the meantime, any single attempt to enter the market with a new-style economics text would be likely to fail, unable to break the lock on the market which the current textbooks have.
We corresponded on this and talked. Eventually, the editor said he would go ahead on the basis that no more than ten percent of the total material could be the new economics, the other 90 percent would be the old. But I just couldn’t do it, I couldn’t be part of disseminating a wrong-headed view of the world which leads to so much bad policy advice. I didn’t blame the man. He was thoughtful and anxious to do good, but faced commercial imperatives. So the textbook of twenty-first century economics is still waiting to be written.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004571.html
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Flint Michigan Resident, Tax Payer, Flint Nutt - Local REALTOR - Activist. www.FlintTown.com |
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Mon Jul 14, 2008 2:50 am |
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Adam Ford
F L I N T O I D
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quote:
Public D schreef:
What if economics addressed environmental and societal needs?
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/74/The_Economics_Textbook_of_the_21st_Century.html
At the forefront of economics, major changes are happening. And many of them are changes for the better. The old economics view of the world, in which everyone acts purely in his or her own self-interest, in which free markets are the solution to almost everything, has been abandoned.
From the very beginning premise this article is flawed. Supply and demand, shortages, surpluses and market equilibrium are still the mainstream. Even if "change" is happening does not mean the old priciples aren't still valid.
I think I'm more of a Kenesian economist fan although I just have a general business degree. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics
I'm also a big fan of my former teacher Mark Perry. http://mjperry.blogspot.com/ I think he's probably better than the people quoted in the long-winded article. |
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Mon Jul 14, 2008 8:29 am |
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Public D
F L I N T O I D
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Perry's biggest fan is Perry. I've actually heard him say that he believes his life's mission is to be tireless advocate of free trade, laissez-faire economics in the media. I'm sure that holds for 'in the classroom' too. Amen. Question everything, Adam.
http://www.paecon.net/HistoryPAE.htm
A Brief History of the Post-Autistic Economics Movement
Theories, scientific and otherwise, do not represent the world as it is but rather by highlighting certain aspects of it while leaving others in the dark. It may be the case that two theories highlight the same aspects of some corner of reality but offer different conclusions. In the last century, this type of situation preoccupied the philosophy of science. Post-Autistic Economics, however, addresses a different kind of situation: one where one theory, that illuminates a few facets of its domain rather well, wants to suppress other theories that would illuminate some of the many facets that it leaves in the dark. This theory is neoclassical economics. Because it has been so successful at sidelining other approaches, it also is called “mainstream economics”.
From the 1960s onward, neoclassical economists have increasingly managed to block the employment of non-neoclassical economists in university economics departments and to deny them opportunities to publish in professional journals. They also have narrowed the economics curriculum that universities offer students. At the same time they have increasingly formalized their theory, making it progressively irrelevant to understanding economic reality. And now they are even banishing economic history and the history of economic thought from the curriculum, these being places where the student might be exposed to non-neoclassical ideas. Why has this tragedy happened?
Many factors have contributed, but three especially. First, neoclassical economists have as a group deluded themselves into believing that all you need for an exact science is mathematics, and never mind about whether the symbols used refer quantitatively to the real world. What began as an indulgence became an addiction, leading to a collective fantasy of scientific achievement where in most cases none exists. To preserve their illusions, neoclassical economists have found it increasingly necessary to isolate themselves from non-believers.
Second, as Joseph Stiglitz has observed, economics has suffered “a triumph of ideology over science”.1 Instead of regarding their theory as a tool in the pursuit of knowledge, neoclassical economists have made it the required viewpoint from which, at all times and in all places, to look at all economic phenomena. This is the position of neoliberalism.
Third, today’s economies, including the societies in which they are embedded, are very different from those of the 19th century for which neoclassical economics was invented to describe. These differences become more pronounced every decade as new aspects of economic reality emerge, for example, consumer societies, corporate globalization, economic induced environmental disasters and impending ecological ones, the accelerating gap between the rich and poor, and the movement for equal-opportunity economies. Consequently neoclassical economics sheds light on an ever-smaller proportion of economic reality, leaving more and more of it in the dark for students permitted only the neoclassical viewpoint. This makes the neoclassical monopoly more outrageous and costly every year, requiring of it ever more desperate measures of defense, like eliminating economic history and history of economics from the curriculum.
But eventually reality overtakes time-warp worlds like mainstream economics and the Soviet Union. The moment and place of the tipping point, however, nearly always takes people by surprise. In June 2000, a few economics students in Paris circulated a petition calling for the reform of their economics curriculum. One doubts that any of those students in their wildest dreams anticipated the effect their initiative would have. Their petition was short, modest and restrained. Its first part, “We wish to escape from imaginary worlds”, summarizes what they were protesting against.
Most of us have chosen to study economics so as to acquire a deep understanding of the economic phenomena with which the citizens of today are confronted. But the teaching that is offered, that is to say for the most part neoclassical theory or approaches derived from it, does not generally answer this expectation. Indeed, even when the theory legitimately detaches itself from contingencies in the first instance, it rarely carries out the necessary return to the facts. The empirical side (historical facts, functioning of institutions, study of the behaviors and strategies of the agents . . .) is almost nonexistent. Furthermore, this gap in the teaching, this disregard for concrete realities, poses an enormous problem for those who would like to render themselves useful to economic and social actors.
The students asked instead for a broad spectrum of analytical viewpoints.
Too often the lectures leave no place for reflection. Out of all the approaches to economic questions that exist, generally only one is presented to us. This approach is supposed to explain everything by means of a purely axiomatic process, as if this were THE economic truth. We do not accept this dogmatism. We want a pluralism of approaches, adapted to the complexity of the objects and to the uncertainty surrounding most of the big questions in economics (unemployment, inequalities, the place of financial markets, the advantages and disadvantages of free-trade, globalization, economic development, etc.)
The Parisian students’ complaint about the narrowness of their economics education and their desire for a broadband approach to economics teaching that would enable them to connect constructively and comprehensively with the complex economic realities of their time hit a chord with French news media. Major newspapers and magazines gave extensive coverage to the students’ struggle against the “autistic science”. Economics students from all over France rushed to sign the petition. Meanwhile a growing number of French economists dared to speak out in support and even to launch a parallel petition of their own. Finally the French government stepped in. The Minister of Education set up a high level commission to investigate the students’ complaints.
News of these events in France spread quickly via the Web and email around the world. The distinction drawn by the French students between what can be called narrowband and broadband approaches to economics, and their plea for the latter, found support from large numbers of economics students and economists in many countries. In June 2001, almost exactly a year after the French students had released their petition, 27 PhD candidates at Cambridge University in the UK launched their own, titled “Opening Up Economics”. Besides reiterating the French students’ call for a broadband approach to economics teaching, the Cambridge students also champion its application to economic research.
This debate is important because in our view the status quo is harmful in at least four respects. Firstly, it is harmful to students who are taught the 'tools' of mainstream economics without learning their domain of applicability. The source and evolution of these ideas is ignored, as is the existence and status of competing theories. Secondly, it disadvantages a society that ought to be benefiting from what economists can tell us about the world. Economics is a social science with enormous potential for making a difference through its impact on policy debates. In its present form its effectiveness in this arena is limited by the uncritical application of mainstream methods. Thirdly, progress towards a deeper understanding of many important aspects of economic life is being held back. By restricting research done in economics to that based on one approach only, the development of competing research programs is seriously hampered or prevented altogether. Fourth and finally, in the current situation an economist who does not do economics in the prescribed way finds it very difficult to get recognition for her research.
In August of the same year economics students from 17 countries who had gathered in the USA in Kansas City, released their International Open Letter to all economics departments calling on them to reform economics education and research by adopting the broadband approach. Their letter includes the following seven points.
1. A broader conception of human behavior. The definition of economic man as an autonomous rational optimizer is too narrow and does not allow for the roles of other determinants such as instinct, habit formation and gender, class and other social factors in shaping the economic psychology of social agents.
2. Recognition of culture. Economic activities, like all social phenomena, are necessarily embedded in culture, which includes all kinds of social, political and moral value-systems and institutions. These profoundly shape and guide human behavior by imposing obligations, enabling and disabling particular choices, and creating social or communal identities, all of which may impact on economic behavior.
3. Consideration of history. Economic reality is dynamic rather than static – and as economists we must investigate how and why things change over time and space. Realistic economic inquiry should focus on process rather than simply on ends.
4. A new theory of knowledge. The positive-vs.-normative dichotomy which has traditionally been used in the social sciences is problematic. The fact-value distinction can be transcended by the recognition that the investigator’s values are inescapably involved in scientific inquiry and in making scientific statements, whether consciously or not. This acknowledgement enables a more sophisticated assessment of knowledge claims.
5. Empirical grounding. More effort must be made to substantiate theoretical claims with empirical evidence. The tendency to privilege theoretical tenets in the teaching of economics without reference to empirical observation cultivates doubt about the realism of such explanations.
6. Expanded methods. Procedures such as participant observation, case studies and discourse analysis should be recognized as legitimate means of acquiring and analyzing data alongside econometrics and formal modelling. Observation of phenomena from different vantage points using various data-gathering techniques may offer new insights into phenomena and enhance our understanding of them.
7. Interdisciplinary dialogue. Economists should be aware of diverse schools of thought within economics, and should be aware of developments in other disciplines, particularly the social sciences.
In March 2003 economics students at Harvard launched their own petition, demanding from its economics department an introductory course that would have “better balance and coverage of a broader spectrum of views” and that would “not only teach students the accepted modes of thinking, but also challenge students to think critically and deeply about conventional truths.”2
Students have not been alone in mounting increasing pressure on the status quo. Thousands of economists from scores of countries have also in various forms taken up the cause for broadband economics under the banner “Post-Autistic Economics” and the slogan “sanity, humanity and science” The PAE movement is not about trying to replace neoclassical economics with another partial truth, but rather about reopening economics for free scientific inquiry, making it a pursuit where empiricism outranks a priorism and where critical thinking rules instead of ideology. |
_________________
http://www.toomuchonline.org/index.html
http://www.hr676.org
http://www.pnhp.org/publications/the_national_health_insurance_bill_hr_676.php |
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Mon Jul 14, 2008 11:00 am |
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Adam Ford
F L I N T O I D
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quote:
Public D schreef:
Perry's biggest fan is Perry. I've actually heard him say that he believes his life's mission is to be tireless advocate of free trade, laissez-faire economics in the media. I'm sure that holds for 'in the classroom' too. Amen. Question everything, Adam.
Perry hasn't posted anything I disagree with. I'm a big fan of his and I've watched him on CNBC.
The only problem I see with complete free markets is you need to defend property rights so all costs are taken into consideration. |
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Mon Jul 14, 2008 11:12 am |
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Public D
F L I N T O I D
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Mon Jul 14, 2008 11:29 am |
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Adam Ford
F L I N T O I D
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Mon Jul 14, 2008 11:47 am |
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Dave Starr
F L I N T O I D
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My guess was Halliburton.  |
_________________
I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Mon Jul 14, 2008 12:37 pm |
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Public D
F L I N T O I D
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Mon Jul 14, 2008 1:18 pm |
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Adam Ford
F L I N T O I D
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Mon Jul 14, 2008 1:53 pm |
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Public D
F L I N T O I D
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Here, Mr. Perry proves the point magnificently. Neoclassical Economic Math Hocus Poci really can explain the whole crazy-ass world – all it takes is some crazy-ass math-ish statistical interpreting:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121592969771748931.html
Political Diary
Obama's Bear Market?
Are global investors anticipating a Barack Obama victory in November and the economic storm that his high-tax and antitrade policies would bring? That's a convenient reading of the stock market's recent behavior for Republicans, who have reason for wanting to deflect blame from George W. Bush and his Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. But we do know investors are forward-looking and the slide in the dollar and the fall in the market (despite decent corporate profits) have accelerated at the same pace as Mr. Obama's meteoric political rise over the past nine months.
Now some smart analysts have decided to quantify the relationship. They find a definite inverse correlation between Mr. Obama's probability of winning the election (as measured by the Intrade political futures market) and the ups and downs of the stock market. Intrade provides a trading market where investors can bet on who will win the election – such betting markets have a record of performing better than polls in forecasting election outcomes. University of Michigan Economist Mark Perry was perhaps the first to uncover the relationship between this Obama index and asset values. Radio host and fund manager Jerry Bowyer notes on CNBC.com that investors would have good reason for wanting to flee U.S. markets ahead of an Obama victory. Increases in capital gains and dividend taxes alone will "mean very large additional levies on investors." Mr. Bowyer adds: "Of course, this affects stock prices. It is ludicrous to suggest that adding taxes directly on an asset class would have no effect on its value."
If Messrs. Perry and Bowyer are correct in their analysis, the lousy market in the last few weeks makes sense. Yes, it's partly a result of Ben Bernanke's decision not to raise interest rates. But Senator Obama is now trading as a 34% favorite – that is, bettors believe Mr. Obama is 34% more likely to win in November than Republican John McCain. That implies big tax hikes aimed at the returns on investment in the stock market.
The lesson here for investors is to keep an eye on the betting markets as a leading indicator as to the direction of stocks. "If the political winds keep blowing left," says Dan Clifton of Strategas, an investment advisory firm, "the market is going to tank. In that case, I advise, get out of the market while you still can."
-- Stephen Moore |
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http://www.toomuchonline.org/index.html
http://www.hr676.org
http://www.pnhp.org/publications/the_national_health_insurance_bill_hr_676.php |
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Tue Jul 15, 2008 1:49 pm |
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Adam
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quote:
Public D schreef:
Here, Mr. Perry proves the point magnificently. Neoclassical Economic Math Hocus Poci really can explain the whole crazy-ass world – all it takes is some crazy-ass math-ish statistical interpreting:
Yeah we should all just go on welfare and not worry about "silly economics". |
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Tue Jul 15, 2008 3:03 pm |
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Dave Starr
F L I N T O I D
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quote:
Adam schreef:
quote:
Public D schreef:
Here, Mr. Perry proves the point magnificently. Neoclassical Economic Math Hocus Poci really can explain the whole crazy-ass world – all it takes is some crazy-ass math-ish statistical interpreting:
Yeah we should all just go on welfare and not worry about "silly economics".
Yup. Why work or get an education when the government will support you for your entire life.? |
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I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Tue Jul 15, 2008 3:42 pm |
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Public D
F L I N T O I D
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quote:
Adam schreef:
quote:
Public D schreef:
Here, Mr. Perry proves the point magnificently. Neoclassical Economic Math Hocus Poci really can explain the whole crazy-ass world – all it takes is some crazy-ass math-ish statistical interpreting:
Yeah we should all just go on welfare and not worry about "silly economics".
We will all be in the poor house listening to these jerks blame the economic downturn on Obama's candidacy and not the sub prime housing mess, income inequality, the energy mess, the health care mess, the wars, the trade gap, their obnoxious egos, and their complete disassociation from any blame!
Honestly, you guys really think the stock market is reacting to Obama? How old are you? Do you believe that when the Easter Bunny crucified Santa Clause it started the Great Depression? Just because a guy has an MBA doesn't mean his snake oil doesn't stink! This is not a partisan issue, folks. Making it one will not fix it. |
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http://www.toomuchonline.org/index.html
http://www.hr676.org
http://www.pnhp.org/publications/the_national_health_insurance_bill_hr_676.php |
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Tue Jul 15, 2008 4:34 pm |
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