sho nuff. and then, there are the jobs. --- On Mon, 9/14/09, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Jim Devine <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Cochrane reply to Krugman To: "Progressive Economics" <[email protected]> Date: Monday, September 14, 2009, 5:25 PM Julio Huato wrote: > http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/research/Papers/krugman_response.doc Cochrane writes: >Imagine this weren’t economics for a moment. Imagine this were a respected >scientist turned popular writer, who says, most basically, that everything >everyone has done in his field since the mid 1960s is a complete waste of >time. Everything that fills its academic journals, is taught in its PhD >programs, presented at its conferences, summarized in its graduate textbooks, >and rewarded with the accolades a profession can bestow, including multiple >Nobel prizes, is totally wrong. < This happened in psychology. Clark Hull was the leader of experimental "rat psych" with all sorts of pretensions about being able to quantify behavior. In fact, his view of people was much the same as that of economists: we suffer discomfort due to lack of food (or whatever) and seek to end it, by ending homeostasis. Attaining homeostasis is like attaining maximum utility, though Hull pointed to biological bases. Economists just wave their hands. Suddenly (in the early 1960s?), Hull's very influential work became totally obsolete, because it became very clear that people like excitement, which is the opposite of seeking homeostasis. see http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/behaviorism/clarkhull.html (there's also a very high BS/understanding ratio in Cochrane: the fact that a bunch of economists gave each other "Nobel" prizes is a sign that economics is a science?) -- 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
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