The worldly turn: A return to economics that studies the real world • Hacker News Board

Re: The worldly turn: A return to economics that studies the real world

#21

Post by huitzitziltzin » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 1:47 AM UTC

osclarto wrote: post #10

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #6

The sections of this article which are descriptions of current work being done by several Clark medal winners are reasonably accurate and fair summaries. The rest is a complete mess written by someone who is uninformed at best. The discussion of tobacco taxes and the discussion of wages in the Premier League are both particularly bad. Please don't take it seriously as a description of what's going on in the field or…

I graduated with an econ BSc from a Russel Group University in the UK, it was definitely not made clear where and where not there was actual empirical evidence for the conclusions of the neoclassical modelling we were taught. The state of syllabi around the world is a total embarrassment.

The first question to ask is when you graduated. Syllabi continue to become more and more empirical, but that process started in the 90’s and accelerated in the 2000’s.

MIT’s Micro Principles class has at this point been rewritten so that it is “the Principles of Economics and Relevant Empirical Evidence.” (That’s my gloss on it not the actual title.)

My class definitely features examples from the news every week or every day.

I cite the research literature when I can, but it’s not really possible to get in depth with students who are taking their first course in the subject.

Re: The worldly turn: A return to economics that studies the real world

#22

Post by mbrodersen » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 2:37 AM UTC

Economics is and has always been ideology disguised as “facts” or “science”. There are many incompatible schools of economics that constantly battle for supremacy. And the current winner is always the school that best support/explain/justify the current ruling class. So you can almost predict who the ruling class is at any given time based on the school of economics most taught at Universities at that time. Kinda obvious when you think about it since the ruling class decide who the economists are that teach at Universities.

Re: The worldly turn: A return to economics that studies the real world

#23

Post by comp_throw7 » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 4:05 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #16

chisquared wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How's that going in 2022? It's brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty [0], drastically increased their life expectancies [1], and significantly improved their chances of making it to adulthood [2]. For more, see https://www.gapminder.org . [0] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$encodin... [1] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$encodin... [2] https://www.gapminder.o…

If you're going to use those things as the yardstick for success, may I take a moment to point out that China has accomplished all that, much faster, on a much larger relative scale, via a distinctly non-neo-liberal economic system. (50x GDP/capita growth over the past 40 years, +13 years of life expectancy, a reduction in absolute poverty from 88% to 0.7%, etc, etc.) But I generally don't see many Western economists…

China did that by massively reducing the influence and scope of government control & influence over their markets. I don't care whether or not you call that "neoliberal" but it's the same root cause driving those improvements worldwide.

Re: The worldly turn: A return to economics that studies the real world

#24

Post by jhbadger » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 4:32 AM UTC

ur-whale wrote: post #9

UIUC_06 wrote: post #7

"The law of supply and demand" is never going to fit everything the way the law of gravity does. It's a rough guideline that applies to artificial models better than it does to the real world. It seems like economists need to admit it when a minimum wage law don't have the effect they think it "should" instead of stubbornly insisting they're right. However, you can tell a "journalist" wrote this... >Isaiah Andrews, o…

> in physics you can do experiments quite easily, and in the social sciences and economics, you can't. Which is exactly why neither are actual science.

So astrophysics isn't science? You can't just make a supernova on demand. Some sciences are inherently historical -- that is you can look at past events and make models but are powerless to create new events.

Re: The worldly turn: A return to economics that studies the real world

#25

Post by jhbadger » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 4:36 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #16

chisquared wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How's that going in 2022? It's brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty [0], drastically increased their life expectancies [1], and significantly improved their chances of making it to adulthood [2]. For more, see https://www.gapminder.org . [0] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$encodin... [1] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$encodin... [2] https://www.gapminder.o…

If you're going to use those things as the yardstick for success, may I take a moment to point out that China has accomplished all that, much faster, on a much larger relative scale, via a distinctly non-neo-liberal economic system. (50x GDP/capita growth over the past 40 years, +13 years of life expectancy, a reduction in absolute poverty from 88% to 0.7%, etc, etc.) But I generally don't see many Western economists…

"Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" is just a euphemism for capitalism. Modern China isn't a democratic nation. but it is a capitalistic one by any standard.

Re: The worldly turn: A return to economics that studies the real world

#26

Post by pakitan » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 2:16 PM UTC

bogota wrote: post #14

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #6

The sections of this article which are descriptions of current work being done by several Clark medal winners are reasonably accurate and fair summaries. The rest is a complete mess written by someone who is uninformed at best. The discussion of tobacco taxes and the discussion of wages in the Premier League are both particularly bad. Please don't take it seriously as a description of what's going on in the field or…

Can you explain how it’s a complete mess? I have been interested in economics for a long time and as such read many published articles but I have a hard time actually applying it to anything in the real world. Often the majority of economists are completely wrong just look at recent inflation predictions. You don’t have to look hard to find the field is consistently far off the mark.

I'm not an economist but the examples with tobacco and premier league wages struck me too as extremely bad. Supply/demand curves are an abstraction and for that abstraction to be remotely useful, you need to assume all else is being equal. You can't just take decades of data, with massive change in culture and health consciousness, and declare "Supply/demand curves are wrong because tobacco price fell, while consumption also fell! The economists lied to us when they told us price is the only thing that drives consumption!"

Well, bullshit, no economist ever claimed that.

And the rising salaries of the premier league plays are not a big mystery. If all clubs can fire the worst 50% of their players, their salary budget is increased. If that happens in a company like McDonalds, you can can just keep paying the rest the same or even less because everyone can flip burgers. Premier league clubs can't just pocket the "saved" money, they still need the absolute top players to win and if you don't pay your talent the most you can afford, some other club will. This has nothing to do with the failings of supply/demand curves. If anything it's a prime example of them working exactly as expected.

Re: The worldly turn: A return to economics that studies the real world

#27

Post by chisquared » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 2:18 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #16

chisquared wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How's that going in 2022? It's brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty [0], drastically increased their life expectancies [1], and significantly improved their chances of making it to adulthood [2]. For more, see https://www.gapminder.org . [0] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$encodin... [1] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$encodin... [2] https://www.gapminder.o…

If you're going to use those things as the yardstick for success, may I take a moment to point out that China has accomplished all that, much faster, on a much larger relative scale, via a distinctly non-neo-liberal economic system. (50x GDP/capita growth over the past 40 years, +13 years of life expectancy, a reduction in absolute poverty from 88% to 0.7%, etc, etc.) But I generally don't see many Western economists…

The claims I made are not solely about China: they're true about very many other developing countries as well. See, for example, India.

That said, I would dispute the claim that China's economic system is distinctly non-neoliberal. In fact, most of the key elements of China's economic reform were about bringing it closer to neoliberalism rather than taking it further away.

Re: The worldly turn: A return to economics that studies the real world

#28

Post by kevin_morrill » Mon, Jan 24, 2022, 12:41 AM UTC

pakitan wrote: post #26

bogota wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how it’s a complete mess? I have been interested in economics for a long time and as such read many published articles but I have a hard time actually applying it to anything in the real world. Often the majority of economists are completely wrong just look at recent inflation predictions. You don’t have to look hard to find the field is consistently far off the mark.

I'm not an economist but the examples with tobacco and premier league wages struck me too as extremely bad. Supply/demand curves are an abstraction and for that abstraction to be remotely useful, you need to assume all else is being equal. You can't just take decades of data, with massive change in culture and health consciousness, and declare "Supply/demand curves are wrong because tobacco price fell, while consumpt…

More over the risk of death is part of the cost calculation for tobacco. Not all prices / values are monetary. This is a crucial aspect any serious economist incorporates and this article completely misses.

Re: The worldly turn: A return to economics that studies the real world

#29

Post by donkey-hotei » Tue, Feb 01, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #6

The sections of this article which are descriptions of current work being done by several Clark medal winners are reasonably accurate and fair summaries. The rest is a complete mess written by someone who is uninformed at best. The discussion of tobacco taxes and the discussion of wages in the Premier League are both particularly bad. Please don't take it seriously as a description of what's going on in the field or…

Wouldn't you want to bring up the work of David Card, who won a Nobel prize by analyzing "natural experiments" on the effects of minimum wage and unemployment?[0]

[0] https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/njmin-aer.pdf