When economists become as modest as the physicists

3 Nov, 2017 at 09:10 | Posted in Economics | 1 Comment

In advanced economics the question would be: ‘What besides mathematics should be in an economics lecture?’ In physics the familiar spirit is Archimedes the experimenter. aaaaafeynBut in economics, as in mathematics itself, it is theorem-proving Euclid who paces the halls …

Economics … has become a mathematical game. The science has been drained out of economics, replaced by a Nintendo game of assumption-making …

Most thoughtful economists think that the games on the blackboard and the computer have gone too far, absurdly too far. It is time to bring economic observation, economic history, economic literature, back into the teaching of economics.

Economists would be less arrogant, and less dangerous as experts, if they had to face up to the facts of the world. Perhaps they would even become as modest as the physicists.

D. McCloskey

1 Comment

  1. Well said by Professor McCloskey.

    I cannot help but remember being told by the same Professor that we did not need food safety standards and inspections for restaurants because reputation in free markets gets us naturally to an optimal balance of the cost of hygiene and the cost of botulism.

    I do not know the full time line of the Chicago-trained McCloskey’s intellectual evolution, but I hope it has gone beyond that stage I remember so well.

    Comment by Bruce Wilder— 4 Nov, 2017 #


Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

Blog at WordPress.com.
Entries and Comments feeds.