On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote:
> Not true. It's EASY to find 5 or 100 or even 1000 economics articles
> "trashing the main ideas of free market economics." The hegemony of
> free market economics is not total, especially with liberals like
> Akerlof, Arrow, Krugman, Myrdal, or Stiglitz getting Economics Prizes
> in Honor of Alfred Nobel. They're (new Deal) liberals, yes, but that's
> not the same as "free market economics."


Krugman and Stiglitz are liberals, yes, but they are hardly radical in
the sense that they do not in any way challenge the underlying
assumptions of classical economic analysis. At best, we can credit
them with a nuanced approach that Chicago-types seem to be incapable
of. In fact, Krugman has explicitly defended the premises of economic
analysis like self-interested rational individuals etc:
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/evolute.html

Elinor Ostrom is the closest to a radical; while her Nobel is a good
sign perhaps, from what I understand her work on the commons was
definitely not published in any mainstream economics journals.



> Even though economics will never be a science like physics,  it's good
> discipline to try.


I think that'd be a terrible idea. Some people (Mirowski) have argued
that it was physics-envy in the first place that directly gave birth
to the methodology of neo-classical economics that was later coopted
for ideological purposes.



-raghu.


-- 
"I bought some batteries, but they weren't included." - Steven Wright
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