Sunday, April 17, 2011

Cyril Hédoin On The Failure Of Macroeconomics

Some time ago, I noted James Galbraith's article, "Who Are These Economists, Anyway?" Galbraith suggests that it might be worthwhile to on the work of those economists who were researching "the nature and causes of financial collapse" before the present crisis and had presciently warned of potential problem areas. These empirically successful economists happen to be non-orthodox economists.

The other day, I stumbled upon a somewhat old response to Galbraith,
"Vers un changement de paradigme en économie" (English version), from Cyril Hédoin. As I understand it, he thinks neoclassical economics is collapsing and - what with behavioral economics, evolutionary game theory, complexity economics, etc. - mainstream economics is pluralist. Given these changes, he thinks economists have no need to look among traditionally heterodox economists for good ideas. Hédoin cites articles I like by David Colander, Richard Holt, & Barkley Rosser and by John B. Davis.

Galbraith replies in the comments. He unequivocally rejects the idea that his recommended alternative is on the periphery of economics. He says he cites the economists he does because he thinks their work is good.

Mainstream economists certainly have a problem in explaining - especially to outsiders - why one should not cite certain past presidents of the American Economic Society, various Harvard-trained economists or professors in the Harvard economics department, articles published in certain economics journals associated with the University of Cambridge, some "Nobel Prize" winners, and so on. (For any Austrian-school economists who may be reading this - certain economists trained at New York University don't count either.)

No comments: