mankiw,annals of improbable research Principles of economics, translated

Principles of economics, translated

posted by maudlin

2 years 4 months ago • 3740 views

tags: mankiw, annals of improbable research

Yoram Bauman's presentation from the 2007 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Why they consider economics a science is beyond me. *runs from farhad*

Comments

The full article from AIR is here.

written by maudlin

| 2 years 4 months ago | CH

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That was cool!

written by NordlichReiter

| 2 years 4 months ago | CH

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Heh, Maudlin. You'd be surprised how many people can't get those simple concepts. Economics is a new evolving science, it's the science of markets in the long term.

written by Farhad2000

| 2 years 4 months ago | CH

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Ah. So if this is a science ... *adds to collective*

Yeah, my husband the chemical engineer likes to sum up thermodynamics as "You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game." Upvote all plain English "rules"!

written by maudlin

| 2 years 4 months ago | CH

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I LOVED this! I'm going to email this to my old b-school buddies.

written by supersaiyan93

| 2 years 4 months ago | CH

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A lot of economics is not science in a sense that it's missing one of 3 steps (build a model, make prediction, test prediction experimentally), but a some of it is a science even under this narrow definition (like Kahneman and Tversky work for instance)

written by yaroslavvb | 2 years 4 months ago | CH

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Most of basic economics has the 3 steps you mentioned, and uses large amounts of mathematics to model behavior that is expected in markets and etc.

However it doesn't really apply since a model cannot really account for the vast amount of factors we face in the real world. Thats why there is the hypothesis and such steps.

But it's sure as hell more scientific then political science.

written by Farhad2000

| 2 years 4 months ago | CH

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To me it seems that most of economics is missing the "make a prediction, then test it" step. I say that because I see that most articles in top economics journals are explanatory rather predictive. For instance, American Economic Review is the top economics journal using citations per article metric, and you can see that it's most influential articles (most citations, I just looked at the top 50 cited papers) are about explaining various economical events, rather than making/verifying testable predictions

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=&num=10&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=any&as_sauthors=&as_publication=American+Economic+Review&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&as_allsubj=all&hl=en&lr=

written by yaroslavvb | 2 years 4 months ago | CH

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I don't read the American Economic Review, it's a bit shit.

written by Farhad2000

| 2 years 4 months ago | CH

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The reason its missing that step is because the world isn't a controlled evironment where you can run those types of experiments. You can't just take a guy give him $100 and see what his choices are etc or experiment with a goverment and see the outcomes. You're talking about millions of lives affected, right there. So that's pretty much why theres no experimental ability to economics and I suppose the way to conduct any such experiment is to make a educamated guess and see the results...

Kinda slow to progress that way, isnt it.

written by bizinichi

| 2 years 4 months ago | CH

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I think you can sum up economics like this. In order for someone to profit someone has to sacrafice. usually that just gets passed on to the next person and creates a deficit. So you'll always owe someone something.

written by gorgonheap

| 2 years 4 months ago | CH

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That's a bit simplified really.

The reason someone has to sacrifice is becuase we have infinite wants and finite resources in which to meet them.

written by Farhad2000

| 2 years 4 months ago | CH

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Well go figure. I went to college with this guy. Had to check; I mean, how many Yoram Baumans can there be in the world?

written by oohahh

| 2 years 4 months ago | CH

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You had me at "blah blah blah"

written by messenger

| 2 years 4 months ago | CH

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Economics in the Science collective, lol!

written by pmkierst | 2 years 3 months 4 weeks ago | CH

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at least the "blah blah blah" was dead on.

He had some good points, e.g. trade can make everyone worse off.

written by pass.the.grog.

| 2 years 3 months 4 weeks ago | CH

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*promote

written by theo47

| 2 years 3 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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Re-promoting this video to the front page as a VideoSift Classic. Originally published on Friday 2nd March 2007 (promotion called by gold star member theo47)

written by siftbot

| 2 years 3 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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Good stuff, but economics is NOT a science, farhad - it's a sociological construct that occasionally uses scientific principles...and is just as occasionally faith-based. No wonder egghead conservatives love it so.

written by theo47

| 2 years 3 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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Farhad say, "Yes, I agree with that clarification, I believe it's people most misguided about economics that want to profess it as the ultimate solution to all the world's problems. It's too common for people with little to no knowledge to profess normative statements about economics that should really be relegated in favor of more concrete assessments. "

And he thinks he's sexy.

written by joedirt

| 2 years 3 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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*blog

Hey I just wrote that comment above but it shows Joedirt wrote it?

written by Farhad2000

| 2 years 3 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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Sending this video to Sift Talk for discussion (sent by gold star member Farhad2000)

written by siftbot

| 2 years 3 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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I can testify to the er.. truthiness of Farhad's statement. I was VOIPing with him when he exclaims "WHAT THE FUCK?!"

Sounds like a helluva wonky DB transaction error.

written by pyrex

| 2 years 3 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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Okay I wrote it once, then edited, then deleted and rewrote it. I wanted to add something else but when I came back it said JoeDirt posted. I fell in into a M.C. Esher daze but soon recovered...

I want to clarify further and add something to what Theo47 said, Economics is a science, it's the science and study of finite resources in a world of infinite wants. I think you forget that both science and faith have been corrupted countless times to carry out political agendas. I mean the entire theory of German nazi superiority was professed by using scientific methods to measure skulls and such to prove racial inferiority. Is science thus inherently evil? One can take that stance by saying it lead to atomic weapons and such... but we know to look beyond that for science is the pursuit of truth and doesn't carry an idealogical stance.

Economics doesn't carry a capitalistic agenda like you seem to think, it is the methodology to study finite resource allocation. Capitalism, socialism, all these ways of looking at the markets factor in. Just because Milton Friedman professes one stance and you happened to have read him doesn't meant he stands for the entirety of the economic field. Social good, external costs to enviroment all feature in economics. It's not the fault of this academic field of study for the corporate stance that profits should be pursued at all costs to the enviroment and it's own consumer base, when any long term assessment would show that unnatural profits are a impossibility in reality. But people are greedy.

written by Farhad2000

| 2 years 3 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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That's strange about the comment thing. We'll look into it. Should I delete it?

written by dag

| 2 years 3 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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we both had ajax comments out at the same time?

written by joedirt

| 2 years 3 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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*return

Not isolated to this video. I just checked out my recent comments and I guess I've been busy saying all sorts of things.. quite a few [deleted]

written by joedirt

| 2 years 3 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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Returning this video from Sift Talk (Returned by gold star member joedirt)

written by siftbot

| 2 years 3 months 2 weeks ago | CH

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