Category: Economic theory
-
Mark D. White As pointed out by Lynne Kiesling at Knowledge Problem, Nobel laureates Peter Diamond and Joe Stiglitz, along with (this year's ASE/ASSA keynote speaker) Robert Shiller and Brian Arthur, discussed "The Future of Economics," which moderator Martin Wolf summarizes at the Financial Times' The World blog. Kiesling condenses Wolf's summary (as reproduced below): First,…
-
Mark D. White In today's Wall Street Journal, there is a book review by Burton Malkiel of Models. Behaving. Badly., a critique of excessive reliance of mathematical modeling in finance and economics, written by Emanuel Derman, a key player in developing the very techniques he now criticizes. Judging from Malkiel's review, Derman's book echoes themes which…
-
Mark D. White This Non Sequitur comic appeared in this morning's newspaper (and online): Ha ha, we get it, economists are stubborn theorists who are holed up in their ivory towers with no sense of the real world, situational context, or empirical circumstances. I almost tweeted this comic, as I do with two or…
-
Mark D. White In today's installment of The Stone in The New York Times, UCLA's John McCumber presents a very critical view of "rational choice philosophy," by which he seems to mean the narrow version promulgated by most mainstream economists. In discussing the ethical problem with rational choice theory, he writes: Rational choice theory, being…
-
Mark D. White In the latest issue of Journal of the History of Economic Thought (33/1, March 2011), we find Steve Medema's History of Economic Society presidential address, titled "The Coase Theorem: Lessons for the Study of the Study of Economic Thought": The Coase theorem has occupied a prominent place in economic discourse for the last…
-
Mark D. White From today's funny pages:
-
Mark D. White Ilya Shapiro at the CATO Institute brings yet more tragic news of eminent domain abuse in his latest CATO @ Liberty blog post – please read it, and make sure to read his earlier material on eminent domain linked in the piece. Despite what the Supreme Court decided in Kelo, this cannot…
-
Mark D. White Ed Glaeser's Economix/New York Times blog post from yesterday, "The Moral Heart of Economics," argues that a belief in the value of freedom is "at the core of our discipline." While I appreciate that someone of Glaeser's stature and influence is highlighting the role of ethics in economics, I find his claim regarding the…
-
Mark D. White A minisymposium in the most recent issue of Journal of Economic Metholodogy (December 2010) asks that very question–it seems to be that reflection on methodology is always justified, and it is unfortunate that it took a crisis of this magnitude to spur it. After a brief introduction from Kevin Hoover, the following…
-
Mark D. White There's a fantastic article in The Wall Street Journal today by Mark Whitehouse (!) explaining how, given the current crisis, more economists are finally starting to doubt the efficacy of mathematical modeling to predict movements in the economy. Of course, some want to build even bigger models, but others, such as Roman Frydman and…
Mark D. White 