Economics Has a Surprising Mental Disorder - Are economists rational scientists? Or grown men who

[groovedaddy]

can't let go of their mommas?" (A, what about the women economists - i.e. the ones who warned about the coming crisis before 2007?)...

The typical mainstream economist is about as good at making predictions as a monkey reading tea leaves. Exhibit A: The financial crisis, which only a few economists outside the mainstream saw coming, despite oceans of papers, prognostications and plumb academic assignments.

The question is, why?

Researcher Vinca Bigo decided to investigate, and found a surprising explanation: the profession of economics is suffering from a collective mental disorder, causing practitioners to project their pathologies onto the rest of us. Which is very costly for you and me.

Let’s explore.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/economics-and-gender?akid=11536.260941.kP7VkA&rd=1&src=newsletter962052&t=3

[unc70]

1. What could be worse?

Failed economic theories versus failed psychological theories. Groupthink anyone?

[Gormy Cuss]

2. I'm forwarding that link to about a dozen former colleagues, all economists

and about half of them are women.

[Igel]

3. They're human.

In 2011 and 2012 I was highly amused. Various news stories spoke of government programs.

Every program that had a testable outcome according to the prevailing government model was wrong.

Every program that did not have a testable outcome was considered correct.

The only exceptions were models with high degrees of uncertainty. "This program will produce 30k to 3 million X." They, of course, were considered correct if the final analysis showed 35k whatever produced even if the program was touted as producing at least 3 million.


Non-mainstream economists have all kinds of predictions. They're ignored. They're almost always wrong. Those that turn out right are judged to show keen insight. Some may. But that keen insight will have to be judged not by political partisans who love to hear that what they believed to be the case all along finally turned out right, but by those who can follow the analysis and identify the key insights of the analysis--not the acceptability of the conclusions.

At a AAASS meeting in 1993 I watched a panel of Russian experts cover their collective butts. "How did we miss the collapse of the USSR?" what the title--or close to it. The grand old men said they hadn't missed it. Each pointed to a paper in which they pointed this out prior to 1990.

The young Turk on the panel sliced and diced them. "Yes, in the 35-page paper you cited, in which you affirm conclusively that the USSR will last another century, in endnote 23 you say that if the data you have are corrupt or circumstances change, the USSR may collapse significantly earlier." He was no less sparing on another panel that gloried in its correct predictions. "Yes, you said that the USSR would collapse in 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, and 1995. You also said that it would result in a massive civil war that would go nuclear and drag in China. At some point you were bound to be right about something."