Question For Readers
I am now writing a paper on the (lack of) usefullness of mathematical methods in economics. I have plenty of arguments against it, but I feel I don't have enough arguments for it that I can reply to, particularly when it comes to pure theory (though I welcome arguments for econometrics too, but that is not as urgent).
So whether or not you agree with them please send these arguments too me, either by commenting on this post or by e-mailing them (stefankarlsson49@gmail.com) to me.
So whether or not you agree with them please send these arguments too me, either by commenting on this post or by e-mailing them (stefankarlsson49@gmail.com) to me.
posted by stefankarlsson at 10:26 AM
4 Comments:
Two arguments I've heard from economists:
* Forces the economist to make implicit assumptions explicit
* Ensures consistency
Maybe you can find stuff in section 4 of Caplan's Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist
Thanks, Per, I'll consider and mention (if deemed relevant) the arguments you mentioned.
The most agreeable argument I have come across pertains to its syntactic clarity and the convenience this offers when teaching General Equilibrium. It is simply a neat way to express economic interdependencies, relationships and connection at one glance, the technocratic curve shifting etc. serves as concise mnemonic.
In computational/numerical science, the term is GIGO - for garbage in, garbage out. The point is: your calculations and models might be beautiful and perfect, but if you don't have correct information of the values of the input variables used in the calculations, then your work is still useless.
I don't read much academic literature from macroeconomists - but when I do, I always note that they appear to spend extremely little time collecting data and quite a lot of time trying to look like physicists. This is why 99% of them, including Nobel laureates, fail to predict very predictable and important events like the entire banking system collapsing. The field of macroeconomics is simply broken.
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