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Reinhart and Rogoff’s 2010 paper “Growth in a Time of Debt” has recently come under scrutiny

In his opening remarks, Robert Johnson said that this “is not the institute of anything goes” with INET now getting to a point where it needs to stop criticising the mainstream and should instead “create a new vision.”

What is the purpose of economics?

The notion of “field” is so pervasive that economists hardly pay conscious attention to it.

Although the objectivity-Grail Quest has ended with total success decades ago (so economists say), the question of the possibility and consequences of economists’ values smuggling into their daily practice still periodically surfaces, and crises make good times for such debates.

In a previous post we queried whether the theory of the consumer as developed in the first three chapters of Mas-Colell, Whinston and Green (and indeed other comparable texts) provides anything by way of content beyond what is implied by the abstract description of consumers as agents who are maximizing something. [We did not discuss chapter four, on aggregation of demand, to which we may return later]. As we noted then, a comparable point can be made about the theory of the firm.

For one more time traveling closer to home – Mainz! It’s been the annual meeting of the German Society of the History of Science (the kind of academic club one has to be nominated for membership).

What makes a good model?

In this post, I would like to explore the views of preferences and behavior outlined in MWG Ch.1, and specifically the view of rationality developed in this first chapter.

Excerpts from “Retrospect and Prospect,” the concluding remarks Bob Coats presented at (or maybe wrote after) the History of Economics conference held in 1972 at Bellagio to commemorate and reassess the 1870s “marginal revolution” (full proceedings here).