The MIT Gang • Hacker News Board

Re: The MIT Gang

#41

Post by DavidHm » Sat, Jul 25, 2015, 11:13 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #29

overpaidgoogler wrote: post #2

The distinction is usually referred to as saltwater vs freshwater economists (referring to the geographical location of the university's). Apart from MIT there is also Princeton and Stanford in the saltwater camp. And Krugman is right that the saltwater economists were vindicated by the recovery from the GFC. However Krugman is not a good spokesperson for saltwater economists. Most econ professors I know from saltwat…

How is trade not a big part of macroeconomics? That's a dumb thing to says. On your debt crisis points, it makes all the difference if the debt is denominated in the country's own currency or not.

His prize was for research on international trade and globalization.

This is a very very narrow field, which is dwarfed by the reach of macro economics.

In short, his credibility about macro, especially in regards to the effects of debts and deficits, is questionable.

Re: The MIT Gang

#42

Post by pessimizer » Sun, Jul 26, 2015, 12:23 AM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #40

pessimizer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Inflation and interest rates will remain low in in spite of stimulus and QE (many times). You're actually aware of a non-Keynesian who predicted this? > Semi-prediction of a housing bubble (August 2002) > The economic slowdown could last 5-10 years and cost trillions of dollars (June 2009) And your claim is that these were easy predictions that everyone got right? I can accept that they were easy predictions...

Scott Sumner predicted the former as did most of the market monetarists. Another great Scott Sumner prediction: fiscal austerity hurts if you lack an independent central bank, but not if you don't (directly contradicting new style Keynesians, e.g. Krugman). The results: http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=29692 Various ideological enemies of Krugman predicted the housing bubble, and far more clearly than Krugman; Ron…

Calling the market monetarists ideological enemies of Krugman seems like an exaggeration. He's linked to and cited them favorably a lot (although he has basic disagreements with them.)

> Various ideological enemies of Krugman predicted the housing bubble, and far more clearly than Krugman; Ron Paul, for example, argued against the creation of a housing bubble in 2001.

Any examples that are economists?

Re: The MIT Gang

#43

Post by tigerthink » Sun, Jul 26, 2015, 12:50 AM UTC

pekk wrote: post #34

pmorici wrote: post #4

It's hard to take anything Krugman writes seriously. All his writing is so intertwined with his politics It's impossible to sort the factually sound parts from the rest and he has a track record of saying some truly wrong things with great conviction.

Are you sure you aren't just discarding everything he says because he has different politics?

Krugman used to think like a typical economist, but abandoned this approach and subsequently became a celebrated columnist. Ironically this was years after he wrote an essay complaining how the economists who became popular were rarely the ones who had a good understanding of economic theory:

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/03/ways_of_thinkin....

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/03/krugmans_danger....

Re: The MIT Gang

#44

Post by georgeglue1 » Sun, Jul 26, 2015, 1:35 AM UTC

For context, MIT has had the consensus best overall economics program for the last ~30 years.

Harvard, Stanford, etc. compete closely with MIT in many fields, but MIT is still the most desirable destination for graduate students and assistant professors.

It's no surprise that MIT students achieve a lot, and it's not surprising they can't succeed when put in intractable positions.

Re: The MIT Gang

#45

Post by BurningFrog » Sun, Jul 26, 2015, 1:45 AM UTC

overpaidgoogler wrote: post #2

The distinction is usually referred to as saltwater vs freshwater economists (referring to the geographical location of the university's). Apart from MIT there is also Princeton and Stanford in the saltwater camp. And Krugman is right that the saltwater economists were vindicated by the recovery from the GFC. However Krugman is not a good spokesperson for saltwater economists. Most econ professors I know from saltwat…

I think Krugman is best understood as a pundit these days.

That's his main job now, and he does it very well. But good punditry is often bad science, and vice versa.

Re: The MIT Gang

#46

Post by BurningFrog » Sun, Jul 26, 2015, 1:48 AM UTC

jbuzbee wrote: post #28

pmorici wrote: post #4

It's hard to take anything Krugman writes seriously. All his writing is so intertwined with his politics It's impossible to sort the factually sound parts from the rest and he has a track record of saying some truly wrong things with great conviction.

I always assumed that his Nobel prize was more due to the awarding committee wanting to support his political views rather than any real economic insight. Pretty much like how Obama was given the Peace Prize when the nominations were due when he had only been in office a few months. Politics, all politics.

It's hard to find anyone who doesn't think he earned that price, even among those economists who roll their eyes very hard at his current political writings.

Re: The MIT Gang

#47

Post by noobermin » Sun, Jul 26, 2015, 2:07 AM UTC

washedup wrote: post #19

overpaidgoogler wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic models are computer simulations! The difference between conventional models and the kind of simulation you would like to see lies in the kind of assumptions that are made about agents and the environment they operate in. What they have in common is that both try to simulate a world in which individuals act in response to their environment. The simulation in your paper might be more complex, but that in no wa…

All computer simulations are models, but not all models are computer simulations. What's taught in graduate school are text-book models which are descriptive at best. I am arguing that more thought should be given to trying to develop computer simulated economies now that computing power is much cheaper. The paper I linked to you shows initial success is at least being able to describe how an economy behaves. It's wo…

I'm a theoretic physicist who does computer simulations of laser plasma interactions. I'm just curious, how much of a scale difference (orders of magnitude) exist between your micro and macro worlds? We deal with femtosecond (1e-15 sec) and nanosecond (1e-9 sec) dynamics by using different simulations and feeding the short time sim results into the nanosecond ones. Is such a thing possible? I'd think doing something like that would be obvious, no?

Re: The MIT Gang

#48

Post by dmritard96 » Sun, Jul 26, 2015, 2:26 AM UTC

Its interesting how his attitude as stated at the bottom of the piece is that they (the economists) were 'right'. Its so interesting because you would think that brilliant people would realize that their claims aren't falsifiable. There was no AB test for the recession and there are a ton of reasons that their decision could have had relatively little to do with anything.

Re: The MIT Gang

#49

Post by closetnerd » Sun, Jul 26, 2015, 2:46 AM UTC

dmritard96 wrote: post #48

Its interesting how his attitude as stated at the bottom of the piece is that they (the economists) were 'right'. Its so interesting because you would think that brilliant people would realize that their claims aren't falsifiable. There was no AB test for the recession and there are a ton of reasons that their decision could have had relatively little to do with anything.

Exactly this. I'm amazed he has the audacity to make such a claim. No sooner does he the make claim does he start attacking right wing politicians for not realizing it instead of making a reasonable effort to justify it.

Re: The MIT Gang

#50

Post by pmorici » Sun, Jul 26, 2015, 2:40 PM UTC

pekk wrote: post #34

pmorici wrote: post #4

It's hard to take anything Krugman writes seriously. All his writing is so intertwined with his politics It's impossible to sort the factually sound parts from the rest and he has a track record of saying some truly wrong things with great conviction.

Are you sure you aren't just discarding everything he says because he has different politics?

Yes, I'm sure. He reminds me of Fox News which I also can't stand because their political commentary is so intertwined with the news that you can't sort out the facts.