,
67 tweets,
4 min read
Read on Twitter
1 like = 1 criticism of mainstream economics
1. Too many unobservable parameters that change every time they are 'measured'
2. The functions are all smooth, when everything interesting that happens in a capitalist economy is not
3. Defends unrealistic assumptions on the basis that they can make good predictions. Almost never makes good predictions.
4. Embeds libertarianism, consumerism and capitalism into models without questioning them
5. Excessively 'thin' conception of the environment as amenable to cost-benefit analysis, no acknowledgement of how ecosystems work
6. Obscene levels of professional arrogance
7. Bizarre obsession with optimisation models. Guys, there's other kinds of maths
8. Use of the word 'proof' for things that are either trivial or don't technically count as 'proofs'
9. Textbooks/classes that teach model first, reality second (or never)
10. Bizarre obsession with linear regression. Guys, there's other kinds of statistics
11. Literally no case of an acknowledgement that a model/theory is flat out wrong and should be completely discarded
12. No real concept of the social. Putting 'identity' in a utility function doesn't count
13. Ridiculously hierarchical journal system that stifles creativity
14. Articles that are way too long, despite pretension that maths allows one to be concise
15. Virtually no conception of power, exploitation, conflict
16. Possibly worst of all, has undue levels of influence on policy despite its huge shortcomings
17. Huge problem with under-representation of women and POC
18. Research largely centred on the USA and other western countries, who need it least
19. At best, only pays much attention to pressing social issues *after* a catastrophe
20. Is the source of 'you just don't understand economics', repeated ad nauseum by academics and internet knuckle-draggers alike
21. Defines itself by a methodology instead of the object of study
22. Is taught as ‘economics’, so that students don’t even realise they are only learning one perspective
23. In practice, has generally favoured the powerful through its influence on policy
24. Is rife with aggregation problems, and pretends they don’t exist
25. Absorbs concepts used by critics/non-mainstream economics, watering them down to the point of being unrecognisable
26. Spends large amounts of time, pages, volumes, on issues which are basically trivial
27. Related: has little conception of its own history. Has been reinventing the wheel (but with maths!) for a long time
28. Insists on approaching history largely through the use of statistics, preferring even bad statistics to the qualitative
29. Makes its students more selfish (don’t @ me)
30. Uses maths to represent quantities which don’t have measurable, scientific units
31. A lot of statistical results are essentially obtained through p-hacking. (Though this isn’t specific to econ)
32. Little in the way of professional ethics or duty
33. Irritating habit of defining all criticisms as someone else’s problem. “That’s sociology!” Or “I’m not even a macroeconomist!”
34. Overuse of equilibrium & comparative statics, little conception of how things actually change
35. Crises are not exogenous shocks
36. Dear microeconomists. Why do I care what people do in laboratory gambles? Besides, gigerenzer did it better.
37. Behavioural economics: making economic man more realistic by having him solve more complex utility functions
38. Also behavioural economics: ‘nudging’ people to be more ‘rational’, because economists clearly have that idea down
39. Game theory weirdly convinces it’s practitioners it’s applicable almost everywhere when it’s applicable almost nowhere
40. Preference satisfaction & efficiency/output are the focal points of almost every model. The normative implications are rarely laid bare
41. Calibration. Wtf
42. Large areas of undergraduate economics are the same as books from hundreds of years ago, with no empirical reason for why
43. The EMH is either the most trivial or most ridiculous theory I’ve ever seen, depending on who is arguing for it
44. On the whole, mainstream textbooks and economists STILL don’t get why banks work
45. Rational expectations is blatantly absurd to even the most casual observer
46. Models are invented too fast, and used before they are fully understood (my latest medium post is about this)
47. Prices simply do not play the coordinating role attributed to them by mainstream economists in many markets
48. Abuse of labels like ‘dynamic’ ‘imperfect information’ or ‘bounded rationality’, when the models do not truly reflect these ideas
49. With the way it’s taught, people who learn it often cannot think any other way. It is difficult to do even if you want to
50. The ‘law’ of demand and supply is quite clearly no such thing. Counterexamples are easy to find
51. The certainty with which comparative advantage is propagated as an argument for free trade is proportional to its utter inapplicability
52. No appreciation of the social economy. I bet most economists don’t even know what it is
53. In general, workplace dynamics are absent (except in terms of contract efficiency)
54. ‘Intuitive’, ‘plausible’. What the hell do these mean and why are they in every econ paper?
55. The spectrum auctions were flawed, please stop going on about them
56. The ‘empirical revolution’ aka we’ve got clever statistical methods and look at them no not over there the shiny bit here
57. Randomised control trials, because we like experimenting on poor people-how else do we determine which experiments on poor people work?
58. Instrumental variables, because the best way to deal with unverifiable assumptions about endogeneity is to introduce another one
59. Regression discontinuity design, because that thing that’s obvious from looking at one graph needs an entire paper
60. Subjective well-being research has yet to tell us anything we didn’t already know
61. Utility as a concept has always been circular. Revealed preference doesn’t help, it just makes it more obvious
62. Functional forms are only chosen for tractability reasons, and every popular functional form has counterfactual implications
63. Excessive use of mathematical notation in explicit detail for god knows what reason. Makes it seem more scientific, I guess?
64. Similar love of graphs as apparently making ideas that are obviously wrong seem right. Laffer, kuznets, environmental kuznets, etc.
65. Convergence, as implied by the Solow model, is obviously wrong. 'Conditional convergence' just makes it unfalisifable
66. Total Factor Productivity is an artefact of accounting, it doesn't measure productivity
