tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post7799416361852381606..comments2024-03-06T06:34:42.881-05:00Comments on EconoSpeak: The Education of Economists: plus ça change, plus c'est la même choseUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-19301224382459477622015-03-15T19:28:39.777-04:002015-03-15T19:28:39.777-04:00blissex,
I would be only too happy to lay off th...blissex, <br /><br />I would be only too happy to lay off the lump of labor and Say's Law if the right-wingers and the Wall Street centrist Democrats would lay off. Wake me when that happens.Sandwichmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-2985906373046748282015-03-15T14:24:23.157-04:002015-03-15T14:24:23.157-04:00«The dogma is so deeply embedded in the models and...«The dogma is so deeply embedded in the models and their microfoundations it doesn't have to be explicitly accepted or even acknowledged..The goofballs and crackpots are called "heterodox."»<br /><br />With the usual sympathy for even slightly more realistic approaches to the study of the political economy, focusing on the so-called Say's Law, which is a slightly squishy subject as a mark of heterodoxy is a bit limiting, and then gets us the rather limiting approach of the neokeynesians, for both neoclassical approaches like RBC are entirely fine, except for occasional wobbles.<br /><br />Which is an improvement, but not much.<br /><br />The real dividing line between "aligned" Economists (usually working for the "sell side") and political economists is that the latter give a lot of importance to distributional issues, which are a forbidden topic ("class war") for "aligned" Economists.<br /><br />The "dogma is so deeply embedded in the models and their microfoundations" is not the so-called Say's Law, but the Central Truthiness of Economics, that the distribution of income is uniquely determined by marginal productivities, and "aligned" Economists can only discuss models in which the Central Truthiness holds (by hook or by crook).<br /><br />There is a link between distributional issues and the so-called Say's law, and it is that usually the make-believe needed to hold the Central Truthiness also results in some version of the so-called Say's Law, but that is just "lucky" happenstance :-).<br /><br />Still the core of the discussion is about the distribution of income and how economic policy (macro and micro) changes it, as Sraffian arguments show, not the so-called Say's Law, which is a distraction. But perhaps our blogger likes to do incremental steps.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com