Monday, December 13, 2010

Econlinks: The 'Economics and Reality' edition

  • Harald Uhlig has an interesting recent paper entitled "Economics and Reality"  (intentionally recalling Sims's 1980 ECMA, indeed) . While he discusses the relationship between Economics and Reality (yep, isn't that what you all hope to hear?) mainly in terms of Macroeconomics (you know, the black sheep of the family), I thought he does that in an informative and at the same time very concise way. Hence, highly recommended; I'll quote his end (optimistic, for once...) summary, to get you in the mood: "Reality, i.e. empirical evidence influences economic thinking and theory and vice versa -- but it does not do so in textbook fashion. Jolted by new empirical and theoretical insights and subjected to the fickleness of attention, the frontier of our sciences lurches forward to the unknown territory of ever more profound understanding. If it moves in circles, it hopefully does so on even higher levels. Practical economics and economic policy follows, with considerable distance. Perhaps, this is how it has to be."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

We need one Mankiw in Denmark to explain our wise government why nobody works very hard around here
a Danish economist

Sebi Buhai said...

It is funny that almost all Danish economists I know think the same. Why aren't you interested in public office, to try and change things? Well, obviously it is a rhetoric questions> probably for the same reason I am never interested in these things :-).

Sebi Buhai said...

...where "rhetoric questions" is the undercover term for "rhetorical question" :-).