I know nothing about politics, and try not to blog about it – in fact, I hope to not post on it again. So please don’t be too mean to me 🙂 But I also like to write blog posts, and find the entire idea of getting the Conservative Party into parliament as a coalition […]
I see that the Listener (ht Agnitio) has picked up on this piece on psychology today (ht Andrew F), which claims that an education in economics inherently changes our behaviour making economists worse citizens. At first brush I would like to note that we have a psychology lecturer suggesting that this implies more people should study […]
From the prelude to ‘Fact and Fiction in Economics‘ comes the following gem by Maki: “Is economics a respectful and useful reality-oriented discipline or just an intellectual game that economists play in their sandbox filled with toy models?” Variants of these questions fly around all the time. Why are economists making unrealistic assumptions? Why won’t […]
I was going to do a quote by Joan Robinson as a quote of the day – but then I realised, I’d done this before! The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists. And in 2008 […]
This is a view I hear all the time, a view that (in my view and given how it is often framed) completely misses the point of economics, social science, and even common sense! Common sense is an important thing to keep in mind, and the concept undeniably has a place when thinking about the […]
I was excited to see James post about value judgments this morning – as that is exactly what I was about to throw a brief post on! Partially motivated by this: @Dovil ughhh it's like they've never read anything about values and the meaning of efficiency EVER. Someone stick them in a room with @TVHE […]