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Blame Economists for the Mess We’re In

nytimes.com

141–143 of 143 posts

Re: Blame Economists for the Mess We’re In

#141
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics is scientific — and much more complicated than physical sciences because people are involved. If I drop a rock with a certain mass from a tower of a certain height, I can safely assume that my measurements of that one event are representative of all similar events in the future. Predicting based on observations of someone’s behavior today what he will do tomorrow is highly problematic because in a real sens…

This is the difference between the science and not-science. The former allows predicting future, the latter doesn't.

Exactly. Behavioural economics can do this, but macro fails at this at every point, or has so far. I think of it as essentially we’re at the bloodletting level of economics - we sort of think we understand how things work, but really, we don’t, and we might be causing more harm than benefit through our prescriptions.

Re: Blame Economists for the Mess We’re In

#142
post #140
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obvious why: there are too many confounding variables to run experiments on macroeconomically relevant scales. This is analogous to why econometrics is bullshit: lack of stationarity in the real world. This is amplified by nonlinearities in the system. So even if things today were broadly comparable to, say, the 1990s (and they're emphatically not), what if there was this little thing somewhere (like an obscure…

Behavioural economics has predictive power, so I tend to think of it as scientific

aimed in particular at macro- and monetary economists. There are some nice results but they apply, as far as I could tell, mostly to smaller settings, not the aggregate economy.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20795057

Re: Blame Economists for the Mess We’re In

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what’s your point?

Forget it, Donny, you're out of your element!

Not sure who Donny is, but regardless my question still remains. So how about this, what was your intention with sharing with us?
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