In conversation with

Exordium

The Strangeness of the Discipline

A Good Scientific Conversation

A Strange Lack of Reflection

Given the amount of questioning we have just heaped on this science, isn't economics due for an overhaul? Not according to economists. They show a remarkable lack of interest in the history and foundations of their own discipline. Positions in the history of economic of thought are given less and less space in the curricula of prestigious universities. You may wonder how a social science can be divorced from its history without losing important knowledge. The presumption that only surviving fragments of work have value makes sense only if falsification of the bad ideas is definite. But it is not. Besides, you would expect that every self-respecting discipline honors its past, learns from mistake, and benefits from knowing important thought rendered obsolete by time. Most economists do not even feign interest. Few young macroeconomists, for example, have read anything by the founders of their field, Knut Wicksell and J.M. Keynes.

Strange, too, is the marginalization of the methodology of economics. A few well known economists have contributed to this field, most famously Milton Friedman with his Essays on Positive Economics (1953). Most practicing economists are content with Friedman's contribution and do not feel compelled to (nor are they made to) listen to current controversy in economic methodology. As a consequence, ignorance on methodological issues, especially among younger economists, is rife. They haughtily dismiss methodological writings for being unscientific while not having the faintest notion what it is. They tend to talk like the textbooks of nineteenth-century natural scientists, yet they make decisions in academia on grants, hires, and fires that stunt the growth of promising men and women in economics.

Puzzling, too, is the absence of serious studies on the impact of its own behavior. Economists have studied every conceivable human activity but their own. One might logically conclude that those able to become "scientific" about the "rationality" of marriage and suicide might want to become scientific about the rationality of their own doings. Much academic research concludes with important policy implications yet I know of no academic research that traces the impact on policy decisions — at least none with the quality of a serious scientific study. Economists cite Keynes's flippant remark that "[m]admen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back" (Keynes, 1936, p. 383) and thus unburden themselves of further self-examination. Thus, in the end, we have enormous effort, intelligent people, political ramifications, serious scientists — and yet the discipline hasn't a clue as to whether it makes a difference or not.