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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:22 2006 |
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===================== HES POSTING ====================
Michael Williams wrote the following:
"I have met so many bright and motivated students who felt that they
were repeatedly required to 'pay their dues' again and again by not only
mastering, but actually doing original work at the ever-expanding
technical frontier of orthodox economic modelling, before being allowed
to 'play the blues' and get down to serious theoretical criticism of
orthodoxy. Too often the result is that they either quit economics in
favour of another social science, or perhaps philosophy, or they put
aside the critical enthusiams of their 'youth' and immerse themselves in
orthodoxy's 'normal' science. Neither of these consequences can be
good for the health of the discipline, I would suggest."
My own graduate school experience was that of 15 or so grad students
moaning and groaning about how ridiculous all this theory was. I
predicted to my felllow students that by the end of the second year they
would not be maoning and complaining and that by the end of the third
year, they would teaching this theory. Now they are, primarily,
practicing this theory without any insights into its true shortcomings.
They get answers that journals and corporate supervisors like to see and
so they keep on playing the game.
Some neoclassical economists are doing some interesting work
because they are loosening some of their assumptions. But, they
inevitably find that these new results were already explained by Post
Keynesians, Institutionalists, Marxists etc.
Ed Slattery
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