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> This is a good example of how so much economics is meant to distract you from what’s important. I think your assumption of malice is unfounded. A likely beni

> This is a good example of how so much economics is meant to distract you from what’s important. I think your assumption of malice is unfounded. A likely benign explanation is that Cowen focused on areas there economists are in broad agreement without intent to mislead.

RobertoG 6y ago
The grandparent is not attributing malice to the author, but to the way the framework of economics is built. Cowen probably believe that what is saying is true and can't see different anymore.
- viburnum 6y ago
  I’ve been reading Cowen for nearly twenty years. He plays dumb when he gets caught out (“I’m not really a macroeconomist,” “I’m not really familiar with Keynes,” etc). Think of him as a lawyer representing his client. He’s not going to introduce evidence that hurts his case.
cambalache 6y ago
Nah, in this case the accusation is warranted, Cowen has always been an unconditional cheerleader for unconstrained capitalism,the status-quo and the dubious predictive and normative power of mainstream macro.
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Economists are in broad agreement because they're paid to be. This is well-documented historically. The Mont Pelerin Society was specifically founded to promote a certain view of economics, and the Chicago School was supported financially by some very rich sponsors who wanted a a pet academic alternative to progressive slant of Keynesianism. The "consensus" in neoliberal economics and its core ideas - including "rationality" and "efficiency" - is a wholly manufactured political project, not an organic open-minded attempt to find credible scientific foundations.
- DavidSJ 6y ago
  The existence of human irrationality is not unknown to economists. Behavioral economics, which concerns itself with the effects of this phenomenon on economic decision-making, is one of the major branches of the subject studied today.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    Yet it still gets grouped in as "heterodox."
    - huitzitziltzin 6y ago
      No. Behavioral economics is absolutely not considered heterodox. Mainstream departments (Chicago, mit) all have behavioral people. They don’t have heterodox people (eg marxists, Austrians, or MMT). Nor should they. CS departments won’t hire people who (for example) believe computers work via magic. Dollars and tenure lines are scarce and can’t be wasted on BS. There is a lot more diversity of thought in economics departments than commenters here know, but there are limits, as there are in every field.
      - gmtx725 6y ago
        my main problem with economics is it makes a philosophical error in that it assumes people and economic agents are inert objects to be studied as you would chemicals or atoms, without the capacity to react and respond to economic "laws" thereby changing them. Reflexivity is a thing.
        huitzitziltzin 6y ago
        > it makes a philosophical error in that it assumes people and economic agents are inert objects to be studied as you would chemicals or atoms, without the capacity to react and respond to economic "laws" thereby changing them. This is literally the foundation of macroeconomics AFTER Keynes. This is (one of several) reasons why Keynesianism was rejected. Every single macroeconomist in every mainstream department in the country (and everyone in a central bank anywhere) would agree with exactly what you said AND say that it is precisely that fact which makes macroeconomics really hard. This is why, for example, even the bare-bones simplest macroeconomic model you learn in your first year graduate macro class must include some notion of the agents' expectations. It would be an error if we didn't do that. But fortunately, it's been at least 50 years since we started thinking about exactly that problem.
learnstats2 6y ago
It appears to me that Cowen has set out (his own right-wing understanding of) assumptions underlying macroeconomics, in line with the editorial position of Bloomberg. The assumptions are set in stone before you can begin to do macroeconomics, given to you when you take Macro 101, to lay the foundation of your future work, rather than examined and challenged. I don't think this is exactly malicious, but it bothers me that the field largely operates on, and draws research conclusions from, unchallenged assumptions.
- huitzitziltzin 6y ago
  > don't think this is exactly malicious, but it bothers me that the field largely operates on unchallenged assumptions What do you know about the research done by contemporary macroeconomists? Anything? Do you know how it is taught in graduate programs? If you did, you would know that all macroeconomists have opinions about where their assumptions (basic and otherwise) limit their models and spend their careers trying to extend them and make them more realistic and take them to the data. I am not a macroeconomist but I will defend how my colleagues approach the subject. You don’t know how difficult it is until you’ve tried to formulate a model that you can actually solve and made an attempt to take it to the data. The field absolutely does not operate on “unchallenged assumptions.”
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - learnstats2 6y ago
    > Do you know how it is taught in graduate programs? If a professor presents these assumptions as "truths" (as they have done, quite literally, via this article), graduate students are strongly disincentivized from thinking about challenging or contradicting them - if they want to pass their course, if they ever might want to get a job in that department, etc.
    - huitzitziltzin 6y ago
      We can have an argument about the nature of scientific truth, but I think that's a big topic. What contemporary graduate macro everywhere teaches you is a set of tools. You then have to ask and answer your own questions. There isn't any "indoctrination" as you seem to be imagining. It's not different at all from doing a math PhD and taking a first-year analysis sequence, or a CS PhD and taking an algorithms class. It is exactly the same. If you can take these tools and show that any of the truths presented in this article are false and can do it in a convincing way, then (as I have said elsewhere in this thread) you are going to be able to get a great job in whatever department you want. Understand something about the incentives in science - surprising and counterintuitive results, convincingly demonstrated, can have enormous payoffs. The way you seem to be imagining things work in economics departments and graduate programs bears little relationship to the way things actually are.
viburnum 6y ago
His paycheck literally comes from the Koch brothers. Nobody is required to be naive about this.

RobertoG 6y ago

The grandparent is not attributing malice to the author, but to the way the framework of economics is built. Cowen probably believe that what is saying is true and can't see different anymore.

viburnum 6y ago
I’ve been reading Cowen for nearly twenty years. He plays dumb when he gets caught out (“I’m not really a macroeconomist,” “I’m not really familiar with Keynes,” etc). Think of him as a lawyer representing his client. He’s not going to introduce evidence that hurts his case.

cambalache 6y ago

Nah, in this case the accusation is warranted, Cowen has always been an unconditional cheerleader for unconstrained capitalism,the status-quo and the dubious predictive and normative power of mainstream macro.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

Economists are in broad agreement because they're paid to be. This is well-documented historically. The Mont Pelerin Society was specifically founded to promote a certain view of economics, and the Chicago School was supported financially by some very rich sponsors who wanted a a pet academic alternative to progressive slant of Keynesianism. The "consensus" in neoliberal economics and its core ideas - including "rationality" and "efficiency" - is a wholly manufactured political project, not an organic open-minded attempt to find credible scientific foundations.

DavidSJ 6y ago
The existence of human irrationality is not unknown to economists. Behavioral economics, which concerns itself with the effects of this phenomenon on economic decision-making, is one of the major branches of the subject studied today.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  Yet it still gets grouped in as "heterodox."
  - huitzitziltzin 6y ago
    No. Behavioral economics is absolutely not considered heterodox. Mainstream departments (Chicago, mit) all have behavioral people. They don’t have heterodox people (eg marxists, Austrians, or MMT). Nor should they. CS departments won’t hire people who (for example) believe computers work via magic. Dollars and tenure lines are scarce and can’t be wasted on BS. There is a lot more diversity of thought in economics departments than commenters here know, but there are limits, as there are in every field.
    - gmtx725 6y ago
      my main problem with economics is it makes a philosophical error in that it assumes people and economic agents are inert objects to be studied as you would chemicals or atoms, without the capacity to react and respond to economic "laws" thereby changing them. Reflexivity is a thing.
      - huitzitziltzin 6y ago
        > it makes a philosophical error in that it assumes people and economic agents are inert objects to be studied as you would chemicals or atoms, without the capacity to react and respond to economic "laws" thereby changing them. This is literally the foundation of macroeconomics AFTER Keynes. This is (one of several) reasons why Keynesianism was rejected. Every single macroeconomist in every mainstream department in the country (and everyone in a central bank anywhere) would agree with exactly what you said AND say that it is precisely that fact which makes macroeconomics really hard. This is why, for example, even the bare-bones simplest macroeconomic model you learn in your first year graduate macro class must include some notion of the agents' expectations. It would be an error if we didn't do that. But fortunately, it's been at least 50 years since we started thinking about exactly that problem.

learnstats2 6y ago

It appears to me that Cowen has set out (his own right-wing understanding of) assumptions underlying macroeconomics, in line with the editorial position of Bloomberg. The assumptions are set in stone before you can begin to do macroeconomics, given to you when you take Macro 101, to lay the foundation of your future work, rather than examined and challenged. I don't think this is exactly malicious, but it bothers me that the field largely operates on, and draws research conclusions from, unchallenged assumptions.

huitzitziltzin 6y ago
> don't think this is exactly malicious, but it bothers me that the field largely operates on unchallenged assumptions What do you know about the research done by contemporary macroeconomists? Anything? Do you know how it is taught in graduate programs? If you did, you would know that all macroeconomists have opinions about where their assumptions (basic and otherwise) limit their models and spend their careers trying to extend them and make them more realistic and take them to the data. I am not a macroeconomist but I will defend how my colleagues approach the subject. You don’t know how difficult it is until you’ve tried to formulate a model that you can actually solve and made an attempt to take it to the data. The field absolutely does not operate on “unchallenged assumptions.”
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- learnstats2 6y ago
  > Do you know how it is taught in graduate programs? If a professor presents these assumptions as "truths" (as they have done, quite literally, via this article), graduate students are strongly disincentivized from thinking about challenging or contradicting them - if they want to pass their course, if they ever might want to get a job in that department, etc.
  - huitzitziltzin 6y ago
    We can have an argument about the nature of scientific truth, but I think that's a big topic. What contemporary graduate macro everywhere teaches you is a set of tools. You then have to ask and answer your own questions. There isn't any "indoctrination" as you seem to be imagining. It's not different at all from doing a math PhD and taking a first-year analysis sequence, or a CS PhD and taking an algorithms class. It is exactly the same. If you can take these tools and show that any of the truths presented in this article are false and can do it in a convincing way, then (as I have said elsewhere in this thread) you are going to be able to get a great job in whatever department you want. Understand something about the incentives in science - surprising and counterintuitive results, convincingly demonstrated, can have enormous payoffs. The way you seem to be imagining things work in economics departments and graduate programs bears little relationship to the way things actually are.

viburnum 6y ago

His paycheck literally comes from the Koch brothers. Nobody is required to be naive about this.