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Comment by throw2016 | Hacker News Reader

throw2016

Its surprising to see one of the most prominent critics of modern macroeconomics getting a nobel. [1]

Till now egalitarian Sweden has made no secret of their love affair with libertarian economists with 8 winning the prize. [2]

One would think the tide is finally turning after the banking crisis with macro economists in deep introspection on dubious models, data and narratives but just last week they were out in force demonizing Bernie Sanders amazon bill.

1. https://ccl.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/The%20Trouble...

2. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/nobel-f...

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The funny thing about macroeconomics is that everybody is a critic of it for different reasons. Non-economists might hate it because it tells them things that they find paradoxical or hard to swallow. Microeconomists might criticize it because it lacks empirical rigor and the economy as a whole is intractably complex to model simplistically.

Even macroeconomists criticize it. Why? Because it's a field that is legitimately hard to research and understand due to its complex nature and chaotic feedback loops. It gets manipulated by politicians seeking authority for their half-baked ideas. And people discredit the entire profession because they focus way too much on controversial political hotbuttons like business cycle theory, and subsequently use that criticism as a justification for ignoring research that is sound and has broad consensus even among academics of wildly differing ideologies. Their job sucks, and they know it.

My two points are.

1. A lot of soft hard to quantify schools of thought went totally off the rails after WWII in a head long rush to impose 'scientific rigor' by aping physics. And to curry favor with the suddenly terrifying political theories of the day.

2. Martin Gardner has line that when supporting evidence in a field is weak and opaque theory mimics the cultural biases of the scientists. "evidence in a field is weak and opaque" fits economics perfectly.

Put those two together is the conclusion is economics is mostly a huge pile of stinking garbage. At best it's mostly irrelevant.

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