Julio Huato wrote: > Now, you're right about Kahneman and Tversky starting their careers as > professional psychologists. But, for all practical effects, the > economics Nobel is like an adoption certificate. And the same applies > to Gerard Debreu. It's not where you start, but where your work gets > adopted, incorporated, celebrated.
I don't think that the SRPE (a.k.a., the "economics Nobel") is an adoption certificate. Only the more sophisticated economists will pay attention to the SRPE winners who don't fit the currently-dominant neoliberal ideology. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, the folks who give out the SRPE have been consciously been trying to get outside of narrowly-defined "economics" for years. That's not just the basis for Kahneman's prize, but also Nash's. (See the book version of A BEAUTIFUL MIND.) The committee sees its prize as being about broadly-defined social research. The Ekon (the dominant political force in the actually-existing economics profession these days, not the ones that I would ever want to read except as part of study of social pathology) treat Debreu as having "proven the Invisible Hand" and then move on. They haven't adopted him. The idea that Kahneman is an economist by adoption is the same kind of arrogant notion that says that game theory is part of economics. It ignores the history and context: Kahneman is a professional psychologist while game theory has been used by all sorts of non-economists (including philosophers) since its inception. This arrogance is part of the "queen of the social sciences" crap (the ideology of economics supremacy) or economics imperialism. Strictly speaking, "economics" is a human-made (mostly man-made) phenomenon. The divisions between the various fields of social research are profoundly artificial. The division between fields does not arise from the nature of the objects being studied. Economists study much more than markets, while many sociologists and antropologists study markets (and economists almost always ignore such research as a matter of principle). Instead, it mostly arises (as Gary Becker) argues from a shared methodology: to him, "The combined assumptions of maximizing behavior, market equilibrium, and stable preferences, used relentlessly and unflinchingly, form the heart of the economic approach." Most economists are less rigid and justly so. But they have a (bigger) "box of tools" which they apply to every question. (Luckily, the tools now include experimental techniques. Modern economics may finally be growing up.) But in truth, "economics" is an institutional phenomenon: people (again, mostly men) created a field and then asserted that "economics is what economists do." Then, they hire, promote, and reward those who fit with their political and economic world-view (and practice the craft well, using the "most advanced" techniques, etc.) The new crop then hires, promotes, and rewards a new (overlapping) generation of like-minded folks. This historical process allows the "profession" to persist over time. The fact that much of economics provides useful propaganda for business and (to a lesser extent) useful advice for government encourages this institutional reproduction. (The technical tools that economists use also add an air of mystery which helps legitimate the profession to the public.) Thus, "economics" as an institution has taken on a life of its own, though the social context in which it operates impinges on it and sometimes changes it (leading to such events as the Keynesian "revolution"). As leftists, I think that we should reject the concept of "economics" as a free-standing field. Instead, "political economy" (or "social economics" or "evolutionary economics" or whatever) should learn not only from economists and from cherry-picking ideologically-amenable ideas from other fields. Instead of following Becker to impose a standard methodology, the method should be adapted to fit the question that we're trying to answer. Knowledge from not just officially-defined economics but from psychology, social psychology, sociology, history, biology, etc. should be welcomed if they contribute to answering the question at hand. We should also avoid kowtowing to the powers that be within the profession, allowing them to limit or even determine not only the questions to be asked but the answers. Economics should stop this crap of seeing itself as better than other fields of social research. That ideology of supremacy seems based mostly on the ease of quantifying most economic issues. But the real world is involves not just quantity but _quality_. Real-world firms are heterogeneous, not homogeneous. (I can't believe that textbooks continue to treat the firms in monopolistically competitive markets as all being the same (same costs, same demand curves). That misses the point of the theory completely. That's why the theory is slowly being dropped by the official economists.) Further, the reason why sociology books seem to have nothing in them but "common sense" in them is not that economists are superior but that sociology studies harder questions than economics does. Even the self-admiring economists cannot get much of a handle on a social process involving six people who talk to each other and affect each others' preferences, moral values, and world-views. Duopoly is hard enough! The vast majority of self-styled economists reject the sociological "moment" of causation (the way in which institutions such as markets and bureaucracies determine individual tastes, social values, and world-views) on an _a priori_ basis (because it conflicts with deeply-felt values of possessive individualism). They focus instead totally on the other "moment" of the process (how people create institutions), presenting a radically partial and thus incorrect view of reality. Political economists should look at not only how "parts make the whole" but also how "whole makes the parts" and crucially, how this represents a dynamic non-equilibrium process occurring in historical time. (The late Joan Robinson -- who should have won the SRPE -- distinguished between the economists' "logical time" (comparative statics and all that) and real-world historical time, in which the present is just punctuation in the path between the irreversible past and the unknowable future.) > I think that the charges of "autism," "physics envy," etc. are not > serious. Then why don't you address them seriously? have you read the literature on "autistic economics"? It's a reaction to Debreu-style Bourbakism, which was imposed on students in the elite schools in France as the _only_ form of economics (the way the very-different U of Chicago imposes its world-view as the _only_ economics, so that non-Chicagoans are seen as being not true "economists"). The post-autistic economists have a valid critique of that school, but it does not apply to the vast majority of economists and Ekon in the U.S. Alas, the alternative they present (if the presentation I saw at the 2008 ASSA convention is representative) seemed to be nothing but a extreme mirror-image of Bourbakism, i.e., crude empiricism. By the way, what do you mean by "serious"? Does that refer to what gives promotion, tenure, economics awards, etc.? does that refer to doing math? I think that "serious" involves trying to understand (and change) the world that we live in. (Debreu's noise-to-signal ratio is so high that his THEORY OF VALUE presents absolutely nothing that helps here.) > The idea that Debreu's theoretical work lacks concrete > content is baseless. It's totally a matter of deductive reasoning (and Debreu was proud of that fact). Deductive reasoning, by its very nature, is not the same as studying the concrete world. Debreu's THEORY OF VALUE even presents a poor understanding of how markets work. You'd think that an economist would know better. To be concrete, what concrete content do you find in the THEORY OF VALUE? > And I don't know who envies whom. For all we > know, those who accuse the economists of "physics envy" may be the > envious ones. Sure, they're envious of the way that mathematical technique is seen as the philosopher's stone for turning lead into gold, i.e., determining who gets promoted, tenure, raises, etc. Though envy is not an admirable emotion, it has a real basis in a valid critique: in many economics departments, status comes with one's ability to win the macho game of "my math is better than yours." (This is often worse in departments that are lower on the profession's totem pole: one of my students got into a "second tier" graduate school and discovered that it didn't teach economics at all, but mathematics. The department was trying to prove that it was (its image of) MIT.) > Who cares, really. I'm not comfortable with views that > reject form, theory, or math in economic thinking, especially when > their rejection precedes engaging them seriously. BTW, I do not reject form, theory, or math in economic theory. (I never have done so. I hope you didn't get the impression that I did.) As far as I can tell, that rejection is just as bad as worshiping form, theory, and math the way economists so often do. Math etc. is supposed to help us understand the world. Too often, however, it obscures our vision. Crude empiricism, alas, can have exactly the same effect. >... But > my honest (unsolicited) advice to them is Get into it, as seriously as > you can. Don't let your initial prejudices get in the way. Immerse > yourself in the material, don't worry about looking good, think for > yourself, be honest with yourself, and see where your work leads you. Again, what is "serious"? is it trying to understand (and hopefully change) the world or is it studying difficult forms of math and models because they're difficult? I've noticed that those economists who talk about "physics envy" are thinking for themselves, not worrying about looking good, etc. They're not fitting in with the herd of economists who see more math as always better than less math. > ... I try to look at economics as > an evolving organism, beyond the individual personalities. In any > case, to paraphrase Gramsci, there's no use in studying or refuting > the vulgar version of a theory when the high version is public and > available. If the high version is really debunked, the vulgar > versions will be easier to dispel. The crude version has big backing from business, the IMF, the World Bank, etc. It's central to the entire neoliberal policy revolution which has swept and transformed the world since 1973 or so. (In full knowledge that historical turning points are arbitrary, I date the beginning of the neoliberal policy revolution to Pinochet's coup.) It's central to the vast majority of the economics textbooks that students are induced to read. As I hope you know by now, my studies of economics are empirically-oriented (which is different from crude empiricism). So my emphasis is on the dominant views and practices of the the majority who ply that field, rather than focusing on the big names, the best & the brightest, etc. Focusing on the elite and forgetting about the mass seems excessively idealist. > ... I'd be curious to know how Akerlof introduces basic economics to first > timers. I seriously doubt that he rejects or regards the simple, > conventional theories as useless. I know that Stiglitz doesn't. I've never taken one of Akerlof's intro courses (if he teaches them), but no-one (including those who rap the profession for its physics envy, etc.) rejects such basics as supply and demand. They might point out that we shouldn't treat supply and demand as independent from each other (or bring up similar critiques). But everyone (including such old-fashioned and non-mathematical types as Marx) accepts some version of supply & demand. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
