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I realize that Krugman was being tongue in cheek in this work, but a lot of the work in theory-heavy areas of "mathematical" economics are similar exercises in

I realize that Krugman was being tongue in cheek in this work, but a lot of the work in theory-heavy areas of "mathematical" economics are similar exercises in obscurity and dubious scientific value. Krugman, in one of his autobiographical essays, described economics as the field that people get into when they can't hack it in math, physics or some other high-rigor STEM field. Part of proving one's intelligence as a junior economics faculty member is doing a lot of mathematically-heavy fireworks and then moving on to "real" research that matters. We can laugh at this one but what is not laughable is the huge resource cost in supporting an academic economics establishment (at least in the theory area) whose product is actually not that much different from this.

bschne 6y ago
Do you happen to have a link / title for this essay?
- mmhsieh 6y ago
  I would welcome someone to help me look for this. I read many of his online essays around 2001, and don't think they were part of any formal publication.
nabla9 6y ago
Maybe you refer to this: How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html?em=&pagewanted=all https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.htm... Soon Krugman wrote another piece because people misunderstood what he said: Mathematics and economics https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/mathematics-and-economics/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/mathematics-and... >I’ve been getting some comments from people who think my magazine piece was an attack on the use of mathematics in economics. It wasn’t. ... What I objected to in the mag article was the tendency to identify good math with good work.
- mmhsieh 6y ago
  It's somewhat the same thinking, but it was a much more candid essay from an earlier part of his career. It was a frank recollection of why he went into economics as a field; he talks about the Asimov Foundation series, and a practical reflection that he was not really cut out for something like physics. It was back when people had janky self-hosted html sites, and the like; probably written in the late '90s.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    >practical reflection that he was not really cut out for something like physics. And it's definitely the case that a great deal of very accomplished people (including in areas like software development and chemistry) are also not really cut out for a career in physics.

bschne 6y ago

Do you happen to have a link / title for this essay?

mmhsieh 6y ago
I would welcome someone to help me look for this. I read many of his online essays around 2001, and don't think they were part of any formal publication.

nabla9 6y ago

Maybe you refer to this: How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html?em=&pagewanted=all https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.htm... Soon Krugman wrote another piece because people misunderstood what he said: Mathematics and economics https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/mathematics-and-economics/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/mathematics-and... >I’ve been getting some comments from people who think my magazine piece was an attack on the use of mathematics in economics. It wasn’t. ... What I objected to in the mag article was the tendency to identify good math with good work.

mmhsieh 6y ago
It's somewhat the same thinking, but it was a much more candid essay from an earlier part of his career. It was a frank recollection of why he went into economics as a field; he talks about the Asimov Foundation series, and a practical reflection that he was not really cut out for something like physics. It was back when people had janky self-hosted html sites, and the like; probably written in the late '90s.
- ghaff 6y ago
  >practical reflection that he was not really cut out for something like physics. And it's definitely the case that a great deal of very accomplished people (including in areas like software development and chemistry) are also not really cut out for a career in physics.