ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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I think perhaps the problem with Samwick's assertion is that he is refering to academic economics rather than economics as a science. In my college economics courses, the emphasis was always on optimization and equilibrium because that is what the underlying theory uses to break down problems for closer scrutiny. It was tacitly understood (though not emphasized nearly enough) that concepts like perfect competition or simplifications such as no trasactions costs do not exist in the real world.
Arnold,
Good essay. It occurs to me that greater value is being created by this and other blogs than by all the Ph.Ds combined. I say this because it seems to me that the greatest value of economics will be when its general principles are widely understood. Imagine all the socialists in the world suddenly developing entrepreneurial instincts. Also, if a Ph.D is all about the math, then most of them will be replaced by computers in the next few years.