Anti-Romer

26 May, 2015 at 21:06 | Posted in Economics | Comments Off on Anti-Romer

Why Discussions of Methodology Are Risky
So what does this mean for a discussion about methodology? I think that it would eventually be valuable to have a discussion about methodology, but only if we can trust that the people who participate are committed to the norms of science. It is too soon to start that discussion now.

We have clear evidence from the recent past that when someone who is secretly committed to the norms of politics can be trusted for advice about scientific methodology, things can turn out very badly for the discipline. Bad methodology can do a lot more harm than a bad model.

Paul Romer

So, Paul Romer seems to be rather reluctant to have a methodological discussion — it’s too “risky”.

Well, maybe, but on the other hand, if we’re not prepared to take that risk, economics can’t progress, as Tony Lawson forcefully argues in his new book, Essays on the Nature and State of Modern Economics:

Twenty common myths and/or fallacies of modern economics

1. The widely observed crisis of the modern economics discipline turns on problems that originate at the level of economic theory and/or policy.

It does not. The basic problems mostly originate at the level of methodology, and in particular with the current emphasis on methods of mathematical modelling.The latter emphasis is an error given the lack of match of the methods in question to the conditions in which they are applied. So long as the critical focus remains only, or even mainly, at the level of substantive economic theory and/or policy matters, then no amount of alternative text books, popular monographs, introductory pocketbooks, journal or magazine articles … or whatever, are going to get at the nub of the problems and so have the wherewithal to help make economics a sufficiently relevant discipline. It is the methods and manner of their use that are the basic problem.