4 ms·

Have seen very little discussion or interest in this year's economics prize compared to previous years'. Wonder why that is.

thanatropism 8y ago
HN's ideal economist is Piketty: politically contentious and somewhat against the grain -- because, of course, software developers are good at everything, and non-economists chiding the economists must be right. (I'm surprised HN doesn't feature Steve Keen constantly) Romer's work could be politically contentious if it wasn't so abstract and embedded in a history of technical economic ideas about development that way back when (in the Solow era) echoed the basic insights and biases of micro 101. Of course, HN (and everyone else) wants to have its own ideas about development and hamper on how "unrealistic" micro 101 is -- so development theory is never discussed. Then there's charter cities, which is like Urbit for non-nerds.
- crdoconnor 8y ago
  >non-economists chiding the economists must be right. Well, there's this guy called Paul Romer who thinks that too: "Paul Romer says he really hadn’t planned to trash macroeconomics as a math-obsessed pseudoscience. Or infuriate countless colleagues. It just sort of happened." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-18/blah-blah-blah-a-renowned-economist-sums-up-the-state-of-macro https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-18/blah-blah... >Romer's work could be politically contentious It is politically contentious. He wrote a paper on bankruptcy for profit, ffs. The Steve Keen loathing neoliberals on HN reading that sentence probably can't even conceive of such a thing being possible. http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~promer/Looting.pdf http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~promer/Looting.pdf Alan Greenspan famously, when challenged, also couldn't wrap his head around Akerlof and Romer's paper, but he's a high profile economist so naturally as a lowly programmer and "Steve Keen fan" I'm not allowed to call him out on it ;-) It was written in 1994, but sums up the financial crisis pretty well.
  - vec 8y ago
    > "Paul Romer says he really hadn’t planned to trash macroeconomics as a math-obsessed pseudoscience." If I understand his critique correctly, it's that macroeconomics has used mathematical rigor and internal consistency to mask the common-sense observation that the models' actual connections to the real world phenomena they seek to simulate have almost completely eroded away. I, for one, can think of a couple of reasons that vein of criticism might not be the sort of argument HN is primed to embrace.
  - neffy 8y ago
    Not sure why you're getting down voted, deliberately exploiting corporate status by defaulting on loans in various contexts is or certainly should be, a well known exploit of the financial system. There´s several papers written in the 90´s and early 00´s that are quite depressing in terms of how they nail failures in both economic understanding and regulation, that will be major contributors to the subsequent crashes.
- sien 8y ago
  Hacker News search - Piketty - 163 results Krugman - 426 results Milton Friedman - 69 results Econtalk - 24 results Tyler Cowen - 88 results
  - nabla9 8y ago
    Richard Thaler - 21 results. Bengt Holmström - 8 results
    - rajacombinator 8y ago
      Von Mises - 1 result (2, but one is a self proclaimed hit piece. Both have no comments. As expected.)
      - sien 8y ago
        Hayek : 294 Keynes : 86 Adam Smith : 106
nonbel 8y ago
>"Most importantly, Romer won the Prize for seeing how the non-rival nature of ideas can boost ongoing and indeed “endogenous” economic growth. Romer also showed mathematically that this process of growth is bounded, namely that it does not explode without limit" Is it common to assume economic growth can proceed at an infinite rate?
- agumonkey 8y ago
  ignore more than assume
  - nonbel 8y ago
    Are you saying economic growth can proceed at an infinite rate?
    - agumonkey 8y ago
      I meant that trendy economic theories spread thanks to ignorance about reality, there's no deep thinking when they become the norm.
- e12e 8y ago
  Not certain how common it is these days, but it was supposedly commented on by Kenneth Boulding: "Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."
  - gowld 8y ago
    No one cares about "forever". In the long run, we're all dead, and there's no theoretical limit to exponential growth until we're all dead.
    - btrask 8y ago
      Especially if we ensure that the end of exponential growth will kill us.
simplegeek 8y ago
He was a strong contender last year as well. BTW, Paul Romer is also an entrepreneur: https://paulromer.net/about-paul-romer/ https://paulromer.net/about-paul-romer/ (relevant to this crowd :)).

thanatropism 8y ago

HN's ideal economist is Piketty: politically contentious and somewhat against the grain -- because, of course, software developers are good at everything, and non-economists chiding the economists must be right. (I'm surprised HN doesn't feature Steve Keen constantly) Romer's work could be politically contentious if it wasn't so abstract and embedded in a history of technical economic ideas about development that way back when (in the Solow era) echoed the basic insights and biases of micro 101. Of course, HN (and everyone else) wants to have its own ideas about development and hamper on how "unrealistic" micro 101 is -- so development theory is never discussed. Then there's charter cities, which is like Urbit for non-nerds.

crdoconnor 8y ago
>non-economists chiding the economists must be right. Well, there's this guy called Paul Romer who thinks that too: "Paul Romer says he really hadn’t planned to trash macroeconomics as a math-obsessed pseudoscience. Or infuriate countless colleagues. It just sort of happened." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-18/blah-blah-blah-a-renowned-economist-sums-up-the-state-of-macro https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-18/blah-blah... >Romer's work could be politically contentious It is politically contentious. He wrote a paper on bankruptcy for profit, ffs. The Steve Keen loathing neoliberals on HN reading that sentence probably can't even conceive of such a thing being possible. http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~promer/Looting.pdf http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~promer/Looting.pdf Alan Greenspan famously, when challenged, also couldn't wrap his head around Akerlof and Romer's paper, but he's a high profile economist so naturally as a lowly programmer and "Steve Keen fan" I'm not allowed to call him out on it ;-) It was written in 1994, but sums up the financial crisis pretty well.
- vec 8y ago
  > "Paul Romer says he really hadn’t planned to trash macroeconomics as a math-obsessed pseudoscience." If I understand his critique correctly, it's that macroeconomics has used mathematical rigor and internal consistency to mask the common-sense observation that the models' actual connections to the real world phenomena they seek to simulate have almost completely eroded away. I, for one, can think of a couple of reasons that vein of criticism might not be the sort of argument HN is primed to embrace.
- neffy 8y ago
  Not sure why you're getting down voted, deliberately exploiting corporate status by defaulting on loans in various contexts is or certainly should be, a well known exploit of the financial system. There´s several papers written in the 90´s and early 00´s that are quite depressing in terms of how they nail failures in both economic understanding and regulation, that will be major contributors to the subsequent crashes.
sien 8y ago
Hacker News search - Piketty - 163 results Krugman - 426 results Milton Friedman - 69 results Econtalk - 24 results Tyler Cowen - 88 results
- nabla9 8y ago
  Richard Thaler - 21 results. Bengt Holmström - 8 results
  - rajacombinator 8y ago
    Von Mises - 1 result (2, but one is a self proclaimed hit piece. Both have no comments. As expected.)
    - sien 8y ago
      Hayek : 294 Keynes : 86 Adam Smith : 106

nonbel 8y ago

>"Most importantly, Romer won the Prize for seeing how the non-rival nature of ideas can boost ongoing and indeed “endogenous” economic growth. Romer also showed mathematically that this process of growth is bounded, namely that it does not explode without limit" Is it common to assume economic growth can proceed at an infinite rate?

agumonkey 8y ago
ignore more than assume
- nonbel 8y ago
  Are you saying economic growth can proceed at an infinite rate?
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    I meant that trendy economic theories spread thanks to ignorance about reality, there's no deep thinking when they become the norm.
e12e 8y ago
Not certain how common it is these days, but it was supposedly commented on by Kenneth Boulding: "Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."
- gowld 8y ago
  No one cares about "forever". In the long run, we're all dead, and there's no theoretical limit to exponential growth until we're all dead.
  - btrask 8y ago
    Especially if we ensure that the end of exponential growth will kill us.

simplegeek 8y ago

He was a strong contender last year as well. BTW, Paul Romer is also an entrepreneur: https://paulromer.net/about-paul-romer/ https://paulromer.net/about-paul-romer/ (relevant to this crowd :)).