Top 10 Economics Blog Posts of 2011

[stockholmer]

http://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/top-10-economics-blog-posts-of-2011/

My views developed and changed substantially over the course of 2011, in no small part thanks to the blogosphere. I thought I’d highlight some of posts that influenced me most, by opening my eyes to previously unknown facts or ways of thinking. Naturally, this list is left-inclined, but I expect most will find the posts interesting.

10. Macroeconomics is not hard (Brad Delong) http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/04/hoisted-from-the-archives-macroeconomics-is-not-hard.html

Delong reveals that, following the crash of 1829, many of the classical economists often appealed to by the anti-Keynes crowd - including Jean-Baptiste Say and John Stuart Mill – came to a somewhat ‘Keynesian’ conclusion about the role of aggregate demand:


Yet Say changed his mind. By 1829, in his analysis of the British financial panic and recession of 1825-6, Jean-Baptiste Say was writing that there could indeed be such a thing as a general glut of commodities after all: “every type of merchandise had sunk below its costs of production, a multitude of workers were without work. Many bankruptcies were declared…”

Apparently the level of 19th century historical revisionism was pretty high.

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9. Blacklisted Economics Professor Found Dead: NC Publishes His Last Letter (naked capitalism) http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/04/blacklisted-economics-professor-found-dead-nc-publishes-his-last-letter.html

This is the first example I saw of how selective ‘free market’ proponents are with their logic, and was delivered in excellent satirical form:


Soon after receiving tenure, it occurred to me that we were being profoundly inconsistent. While we had correctly criticized the previous mainstream view that politics involved benevolent efforts to serve the common good, we had failed to apply the same rigor to the community of academic economists. As a result, we were modeling both economic and political actors as self-interested utility-maximizing agents, while continuing to see economics professors as idealistic pursuers of truth. I decided to correct this oversight by developing my theory of Academic Choice, in which economists are theorized as rational agents who continually seek to maximize their future earnings potential.

Economists have continued to ignore this theory, but a quick look at the financial crisis and some of the origins of the libertarian/’think tank‘ movement suggests that it may be worth exploring.

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8. It’s the Political Economy, Stupid! (Econospeak) http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2011/08/its-political-economy-stupid.html

Peter Dorman sums up how well the ruling class have shifted the intellectual narrative of the crisis, despite losing the battle of ideas:


But Keynes was wrong about the power of “academic scribblers”. Idea-smiths provide language, narratives and tools for those in control, but the broad contours of policy depend on who the controllers happen to be. We are not living through an epoch of intellectual failure, but one in which there is no available mechanism to oust a political-economic elite whose interests have become incompatible with ours.

(This is part of the reason I consider a large amount of public debate to be futile).

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7. Canards about economists (Robert Vienneau) http://robertvienneau.blogspot.com/2011/11/mixin-up-truth-with-something-funny-i.html

Robert Vienneau notes 3 examples of where the conventional wisdom about ‘what economists said’ is completely off: Keynes & sticky wages/prices, the origin of the phrase ‘the dismal science’, and Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’. Short and sharp, but both interesting and important.


snip

[rhett o rick]

1. Thank you for sharing these. nm

[Owlet]

2. Great Post!!

Thanks!