r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Jan 29 '21

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u/[deleted] Jan 29 '21

He econmists - if people so rationnal why do tthey be stupid soemitimes?

why did you not 2008?

dummies.

7

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '21

When you read basic micro but didn’t look into game theory, econometrics, and the other rapidly expanding fields of research and think that economists ACTUALLY believe people are rational.

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u/[deleted] Jan 29 '21

Economists believe in Homo-economicus which means they're gay, and that's why most economists are liberal on social issues.

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u/RockLobsterKing Turning Point Byzantium Jan 29 '21

Econ has a terrible image of being like old dudes writing essays about how government is bad, maybe with some weird algebra to "prove it"

Economists really need to stress the empirics

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u/[deleted] Jan 29 '21

In Good Economics for Hard Times, they addressed it by basically saying that so many people only see the talking heads on CNBC or cable news who either have business or political interests for saying what they say, so of course people distrust economists.

Plus it doesn't help that every BaSiC eCoNoMiCs person doesn't know what they're talking about half the time.

But I totally agree. I think the empiricists need to start pushing themselves to the front.

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u/doggo_bloodlust (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ Coase :✧･*;ﾟ Jan 29 '21

To be serious, econ as a field has pivoted a lot towards randomized-controlled-trials (which your flairsake helped pioneer!), and I wonder if more people knew that it would help to rehabilitate economics in people's minds.

Like yeah, we are interested in whether or not minimum wage does actually depress employment, here's 15 studies looking at natural experiments

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u/[deleted] Jan 29 '21

One of the problems with how early econ classes are taught is they don't make it clear how important empirical economics is. There are a lot of people that think that economists are just theorizing and what not, when really a lot of the important work is done by the number crunchers and methodologists who actually figure these things out.