- Early in July we learned that celebrity economists now feature prominently on the list of influential business thinkers complied by the Wall Street Journal.
- Time magazine listed Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen among its 25 best bloggers, 2013 edition.
- Noah Smith asked When have econ blogs changed your mind about something? and a lot of interesting comments and tweets followed.
- This week Raghuram Rajan questioned what he called the paranoid style in Economics. He has a good bit there (and goes on to discuss Krugman's blogs about the Reinhart & Rogoff story):
... for economists who actively engage the public, it is hard to influence hearts and minds by qualifying one’s analysis and hedging one’s prescriptions. Better to assert one’s knowledge unequivocally, especially if past academic honors certify one’s claims of expertise. This is not an entirely bad approach if it results in sharper public debate. The dark side of such certitude, however, is the way it influences how these economists engage contrary opinions.
In the econonblogosphere Keynes' famous quote is probably more true than ever:
Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.
No comments:
Post a Comment