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I did not down-vote you (as a matter of fact, I up-voted you because I am not a fan of ninja down-voters and I think that you ask interesting questions). Howeve

by Spyro7 15y ago

I did not down-vote you (as a matter of fact, I up-voted you because I am not a fan of ninja down-voters and I think that you ask interesting questions). However, it is evident that you are not a formally trained economist. Economics is not closely tied to politics. If you ever want to have a look at what real economics is, please go to http://ssrn.com/ http://ssrn.com/ and read some economic articles on subjects that interest you. One thing that you will rapidly notice is that politics has almost nothing to do with formal, academic Economics (and this consitutes the great bulk of the activity that goes on in the field of Economics). It is worthwhile to distinguish between normative economics and positive economics. Positive economics, which constitutes the majority of the discipline, seeks to describe, explain, and record economic phenomena. Normative economics, which is the louder minority, seeks to prescribe solutions to problems by using economic theory. The problem with modern Economics is that the loudest voices within the field are listened to because of their political viewpoints and not their economic expertise. Dr. Krugman in particular has the habit of mixing normative and positive economics without providing a careful distinction between the two. This is a huge problem, and it makes the entire field look bad. However, what can economists that are not popular do about this? The mass media has very little interest in impact studies of obscure policy changes done in third world countries, so we just keep churning away in the background. While I would not say that George Box is wrong outright, I would say that this quote from him is not entirely accurate as it could be when applied to Economic modelling. You see, by definition an Economic model is merely a simplification of a real world phenomena. Of course, all simplifications are "wrong" because they are not intended to be "right" they are merely intended to be approximations. Economic models are more prone to error than Mathematical models and models in the Natural sciences because they are, in essence, brutally simple models of Human behaviour. Their usefulness is not subject to their ability to be implemented, but is is subject to the context of the problem at hand and what the expectations are for the model. For example, one thing that I did recently was to analyze some time series data to analyze a market for seasonality. The predictions of my model for the next two quarters were not even close to being exact, but the seasonality estimates were spot on. A model's usefulness must be determined within the context of its overall purpose.

Hyena 15y ago
I think whether economics is closely tied to politics depends on what you're asking after. There are two sets of economists: social scientists and engineers. The latter seem to work primarily for government and their work is necessarily closely tied to politics. But there are plenty of economists who like to propose solutions to current issues who don't work for the government. The former are less tied to politics, but much more closely to it than, say, physics.

by Spyro7 15y ago

Hyena 15y ago

I think whether economics is closely tied to politics depends on what you're asking after. There are two sets of economists: social scientists and engineers. The latter seem to work primarily for government and their work is necessarily closely tied to politics. But there are plenty of economists who like to propose solutions to current issues who don't work for the government. The former are less tied to politics, but much more closely to it than, say, physics.