Friday, September 17, 2010

Economics Detox Program

Cassidy, John. 2009. How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

105: "In 1996, when I set out to research an article for The New Yorker about the state of economics, I came across a lot of unhappiness and criticism. The economics department at Morgan Stanley, for example, was refusing to hire any economics Ph.D.s unless they had experience outside of academe. "We insist on at least a three-to-four-year cleansing experience to neutralize the brainwashing that takes place in these graduate programs," Stephen S. Roach, the firm's chief economist, told me. "Academic economics has taken a very bad turn in the road," Mark Dadd, who was then the top economist at AT&T and the chairman or the National Association for Business Economics, said. "It's very academic, very mathematical, and it really doesn't -- I want to choose my words carefully here: it is nothing like as useful to the business community as it could be."

3 comments:

Lawrence said...

I shown this article to my econ prof's at the Universtiy of Oergon when it was first published. Steve Snyder balked at the idea of a PhD being refused a job by a Wall Street investment bank. Mark appeared to have seen stranger things than this. Bruce only laughed at the author of the article.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

Obviously Michael Perelman has gone off the deep end here if he is using what what major corporations think about current (or maybe a decade ago or so) economists to beat them over the head. Michael, you capitalist pig!

michael perelman said...

Mea culpa