tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post6695561168648311759..comments2024-03-06T06:34:42.881-05:00Comments on EconoSpeak: Can Nudging Become A New Road To Serfdom?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-38825799555397215392018-04-25T04:08:19.358-04:002018-04-25T04:08:19.358-04:00Barkley Rosser
Akerlof’s AEA address is a fine su...Barkley Rosser<br /><br />Akerlof’s AEA address is a fine summary of the multiple idiocies of microfounded macroeconomics. Just take the microfounded = behavioral Phillips curve and the macrofounded = structural Phillips curve.#1<br /><br />The microfoundations = behavioral approach is a scientific lemon since Jevons/Walras/Menger but you have not realized it to this day. Methodologically it holds: If it isn’t macro-axiomatized, it isn’t economics.<br /><br />Behavioral economics has never been more than rather trivial folk psychology/sociology, i.e. an overreach of incompetent economists who do not understand since 200+ years the very basics of their own subject matter.#2, #3<br /><br />Egmont Kakarot-Handtke<br /><br />#1 Keynes’ Employment Function and the Gratuitous Phillips Curve Disaster<br />https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2130421<br /><br />#2 Ricardo, too, got profit theory wrong. Sad!<br />https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2018/02/ricardo-too-got-profit-theory-wrong-sad.html<br /><br />#3 Infantile model bricolage, or, How many economists can dance on a non-existing pinpoint?<br />https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2018/04/infantile-model-bricolage-or-how-many.htmlAXEC / E.K-Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10402274109039114416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-88961064669394676612018-04-23T16:16:28.718-04:002018-04-23T16:16:28.718-04:00For behavioral macro, Egmont, see either the presi...For behavioral macro, Egmont, see either the presidential address to the AEA (especially that) or the Nobel Prize address by George Akerlof.rosserjb@jmu.eduhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09300046915843554101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-65217967187151077342018-04-23T04:20:56.768-04:002018-04-23T04:20:56.768-04:00Barkley Rosser
You are off track. The point at is...Barkley Rosser<br /><br />You are off track. The point at issue is NOT the market experiments of Vernon Smith and others but that the subject matter of economics is ill-defined.<br /><br />Imagine a physicist is asked to figure out how the universe works and after some time he comes back and says: The universe is much too large, not of direct relevance to our daily lives, and ultimately incomprehensible, so I have analyzed the molehills in my front garden — with surprising results.<br /><br />If you want to understand the universe it is of no use to thoroughly examine molehills and if you want to understand the economy it is of no use to second-guess Human Nature/motives/behavior/actions.<br /><br />Macro is about the economic universe and micro is about mole-psychology-sociology. Behavioral economists are unable to look beyond their molehill horizon. But the methodological fact of the matter is that NO amount of molehill research ever leads to the understanding of how the universe works and NO way leads from the understanding of human behavior to the understanding of how the market economy works.#1, #2<br /><br />This explains why the microfoundations approach has failed. However, from textbook to peer review to the fake Nobel, economists still cling to their false methodology: “It is a touchstone of accepted economics that all explanations must run in terms of the actions and reactions of individuals.” (Arrow)<br /><br />After 140+ years of methodological blunder, it is time for the paradigm shift from bottom-up to top-down.#3 Hitherto accepted economists are no longer accepted.<br /><br />Egmont Kakarot-Handtke<br /><br />#1 Economics, methodology, and the Molehill Impossibility<br />https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2016/12/economics-methodology-and-molehill.html<br /><br />#2 Economics is NOT about Human Nature but the economic system<br />https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/05/economics-is-not-about-human-nature-but.html<br /><br />#3 If it isn’t macro-axiomatized, it isn’t economics<br />http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/02/if-it-isnt-macro-axiomatized-it-isnt.htmlAXEC / E.K-Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10402274109039114416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-87137845559424528912018-04-22T20:38:33.240-04:002018-04-22T20:38:33.240-04:00Only one followup here. Do keep in mind, Egmont, ...Only one followup here. Do keep in mind, Egmont, that among the most important of experiments done by Smith and some of his associates, dating originally from 1988 in Econometrica, but followed up by many since, show that many markets are seriously vulnerable to destabilizing speculative bubbles, even when agents are fully informed about market conditions. This is a robust result. <br /><br />I know that you really do not know anything about this stuff. You need to do some actual studying rather than just writing more and more unpublishable repetitions of your standard rants.rosserjb@jmu.eduhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09300046915843554101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-20175310837016921462018-04-22T09:31:45.633-04:002018-04-22T09:31:45.633-04:00Barkley Rosser
Alone the titles of your posts ‘Ca...Barkley Rosser<br /><br />Alone the titles of your posts ‘Can Nudging Become A New Road To Serfdom?’ or ‘Anniversary of Yeshua bin Yusuf dying on a cross’ tell everybody that you never understood what science is all about.<br /><br />The dabbling of economists in Psychology, Sociology, Political Sciences, Geopolitics, Law, History, Anthropology, Social Philosophy, Philosophy, Theology, Pedagogic, Biology/Evolution, Climatology, etcetera has never been anything else than dilettantish overreach, nuisance, and nerviness. All the more so, because economists messed up their own field in all dimensions and never rose above the proto-scientific level.<br /><br />The lethal blunder of the microfoundations approach does NOT lie in any specific behavioral assumption like constrained optimization or bounded rationality but in the methodological incompetence of economists to realize that NO way leads from the second-guessing of Human Nature/motives/behavior/action to the understanding of how the economic system works.#1, #2<br /><br />ALL human-centered/behavioral approaches invariably crash against the methodological wall of the Fallacy of Composition. NO way leads from the assumption of profit maximization to the macroeconomic Profit Law.#3 And this explains why the microfoundations approach has been doomed to failure from the very beginning in the 1870ies.<br /><br />Behavioral economics or Vernon Smith’s market experiments is partial analysis and the results of partial analysis cannot, as a matter of methodological principle, be generalized. From Vernon Smith’s market experiments cannot be concluded that the market economy is a self-adjusting system.<br /><br />The fact of the matter is that correct macrofoundational analysis proves that the market economy is unstable and that it will eventually break down.#4 You can do behavioral experiments until you are blue in the face but this will not yield any results as to how the market system works.<br /><br />Microeconomics has always been the playground of microbrains.#5<br /><br />Egmont Kakarot-Handtke<br /><br />#1 Dear philosophers, economics is a system science<br />https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/11/dear-philosophers-economics-is-system.html<br /><br />#2 The economist as second-guesser, mind reader, and folk psychologist<br />https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2016/07/the-economist-as-second-guesser-mind.html<br /><br />#3 Ricardo and the invention of class war<br />https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2018/02/ricardo-and-invention-of-class-war.html<br /><br />#4 Capitalism, poverty, exploitation, and cross-over exploitation<br />https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2018/04/capitalism-poverty-exploitation-and.html<br /><br />#5 Economists: Standing on the Shoulders of Gnomes<br />http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2018/04/economists-standing-on-shoulders-of.htmlAXEC / E.K-Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10402274109039114416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-6546528714305849582018-04-21T17:52:14.715-04:002018-04-21T17:52:14.715-04:00One reply, Egmont. Sorry, you are wrong here. Beh...One reply, Egmont. Sorry, you are wrong here. Behavioral economics is not based on neoclassical axioms, either the actual Arrow-Debreu ones or the silly set that you always quote from Weintraub. Indeed, you have forgotten, but some time I ago I got you to briefly recognize that experimental economics is actually reasonably scientific, something goes against your constantly repetitive ranting about how economics is not scientific. Much of behavioral economics depends on experimental economics, and results from such experiments were at the heart of quite a few of the presentations at this conference.<br /><br />BTW, you do not get Zywicki's point. He is not against behavioral economics as such. Indeed, his point is that when the legal system has relied on behavioral economics it has done so inappropriately by either misinterpreting the arguments or relying on citation cascades that ultimately go back to assertions not based on empirical data. Zywicki does not say the actual arguments or empirical studies themselves are wrong or unscientific, quite the opposite.<br /><br />And if you need reminding, check on the work of Nobel Prize winner, Vernon Smith, still alive and very professionally active at age 91. I challenged you on this once before, and you actually briefly admitted he might be doing scientific work, before you reverted to your usual vacuous mantras that do not include behavioral or experimental economics in your list of all the supposedly unscientific theories. So, deal with it, Egmont. You are not on top of it here in your argments, and you seriously fell on your face with this one.rosserjb@jmu.eduhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09300046915843554101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-53359698309899267942018-04-21T10:03:41.630-04:002018-04-21T10:03:41.630-04:00Overreach: economists have their fingers in every ...Overreach: economists have their fingers in every pie except in real economics<br />Comment on Barkley Rosser on ‘Can Nudging Become A New Road To Serfdom?’<br /><br />Until this day, economists have no clue of what their subject matter is. While the sciences have specialized, economists follow the Renaissance ideal of the homo universalis.#1 Accordingly, they dabble in Psychology, Sociology, Political Sciences, Geopolitics, Law, History, Anthropology, Social Philosophy, Philosophy, Theology, Pedagogic, Biology/Evolution, Climatology, and what not.<br /><br />People become progressively aware that in all these disciplines economists have not contributed anything of scientific value: “While he [Todd Zywicki] overdid it a bit he argued with some good reason that most legal decisions in the US relying on claimed behavioral economics foundations, especially on matters involving credit and consumer finance issues, have been seriously flawed. They have either relied on misinterpretations or else mere assertions that have not been empirically demonstrated. He raised a point of more general interest in charging that there has been a problem of ‘citation cascades,’ where a string of decisions have been based on people citing people citing other people in a cascade that eventually boils down to an initial claim that has no clear basis.”<br /><br />This is not correct. Economics has a clear basis and it is given with the set of neo-Walrasian axioms: “HC1 There exist economic agents. HC2 Agents have preferences over outcomes. HC3 Agents independently optimize subject to constraints. HC4 Choices are made in interrelated markets. HC5 Agents have full relevant knowledge. HC6 Observable economic outcomes are coordinated, so they must be discussed with reference to equilibrium states.” (Weintraub)<br /><br />Economists simply apply this set of behavioral assumptions or slight variants thereof or the subset of optimization-and-equilibrium to any question they come across. The tragicomedy is that this methodology has crushingly failed in their own field. Economists can to this day not tell how the price- and profit-mechanism works or what profit is.#2, #3<br /><br />The methodological blunder of economists and the ultimate reason why economics is one of the worst scientific failures of all times consists in defining economics as a social science.#4, #5<br /><br />So, the definition of the subject matter has to be changed:<br />Old (behavioral): Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.<br />New (systemic): Economics is the science which studies how the monetary economy works.<br /><br />Orthodoxy and traditional Heterodoxy is lost for science. Economists cannot be taken seriously ― not when they speak about the economy and still less so when they blather about nudging as the new road to serfdom.<br /><br />Egmont Kakarot-Handtke<br /><br />#1 Wikipedia, Polymath<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath<br /><br />#2 Economists’ three-layered scientific incompetence<br />http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2016/02/economists-three-layered-scientific.html<br /><br />#3 Mental messies and loose losers<br />http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2015/07/mental-messies-and-loose-losers.html<br /><br />#4 Economics is NOT a social science<br />http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2016/08/economics-is-not-social-science.html<br /><br />#5 For details of the big picture see cross-references Not a Science of Behavior<br />https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2015/12/behavior-cross-references.htmlAXEC / E.K-Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10402274109039114416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-54225158831113651742018-04-20T22:07:06.824-04:002018-04-20T22:07:06.824-04:00Yes, she was. Very thoughtful. Yes, she was. Very thoughtful. rosserjb@jmu.eduhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09300046915843554101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-80888059330890176552018-04-20T16:40:26.556-04:002018-04-20T16:40:26.556-04:00Was Sarah Conly there?
She's for more of a &q...Was Sarah Conly there?<br /><br />She's for more of a "in your face" kind of paternalism...<br /><br />http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/philosophy/political-philosophy/against-autonomy-justifying-coercive-paternalism?format=HB&isbn=9781107024847#ytml20M0KIPx0iXY.97Eubulideshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00631527929485341690noreply@blogger.com