> NY Times, March 5, 2009 > Ivory Tower Unswayed by Crashing Economy > By PATRICIA COHEN
> ... When asked why graduate students don’t study Keynes or Minksy, Mr. Reny > replied that graduate students work on subjects — like real models of > business cycles — that are at the frontier of the field; by contrast Keynes > and Minsky are not on the frontier anymore....< In this Chicago-school approach, the "frontier" seems to be nothing but the use of more complicated and difficult-to-understand mathematics. It has nothing to do with studying reality, except to promote the idea that reality should be forced into a free-market strait jacket. > A real shift among economists will come only if there is a wholesale > collapse, Mr. Wray and Mr. Card agreed. If unemployment is still high three > years from now, then you might start to see a paradigm shift, Mr. Card said; > economists will “have to say that the market isn’t supposed to work this > way.” But if the economy bounces back in a year, then they will be able to > dismiss the financial crash as an anomaly that is unimportant to the larger > theory, he added.< More likely, the real shift among economists will happen when some big-name economists find themselves unemployed or suffering from significant pay-cuts. Roger Kimball should militate against "tenured radical conservatives," while Dinesh D'Souza should put a new meaning on the first word of "Illiberal Education." -- 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
