MARY SCHWEITZER WRITES: 
 
>I also think there's much less self-awareness, 
>a component I think is indispensable to good research.  That is, 
>it seems to me that may economists do not know how to analyze 
>THEMSELVES, how to be on the lookout for where their own personal 
>preferences might influence why they "like" this explanation and 
>"don't like" that one.  Without any experience in how unconscious 
>social assumptions can impact scholarship, they really do believe 
>that they are totally objective. 
 
        I agree. The point is that arguments in economics are so rarely 
joined because the conflicts stem from root-and-branch differences of view, 
not just on economics, but also on politics, and in temperament and social 
attitudes. Ideas do not hinge on a set of contested facts about the world. 
At issue is what makes for good research in economics. Since there is 
disagreement over the standards to be used, there is no universal 
interpretation of ideas in economics. 
        I'm working on a manuscript called "Resisting Sargent" that traces 
how Sargent's interests shaped his interpretations of rational 
expectations. One chapter in the book is an interview with Sargent and I 
thought you might be interested in what Sargent had to say about his 
research agenda: 
 
 
EMS:  How would you generally characterize the motivation for your 
research?  What are you after?  What are you trying to achieve in your 
research? 
 
TS:  You mean something big?   
 
... 
 
EMS:  Do you think that's what good research is about, trying to solve 
empirical puzzles? 
 
TS:  (Smugly) Yeah.  Even though that's not what I was doing. 
 
... 
 
EMS:  And do you think that what you see as an important research agenda 
depends on what you're after.  Do you think that someone who is not after 
linking theory with data would have a different perspective on what kind of 
research agenda is more profitable? 
 
TS:  So, you know, there's...I can give you my approach to research.  It's 
that I'm an ant, and I'm supposed to do something. (laughs) I'm endowed by 
nature with certain little skills, and I can help out with some little 
tasks.  I don't have any big, global...there are some guys who are capable 
of enlarging influence to the entire research agendas of other people.  I 
have trouble figuring out what the hell to do the next six months myself.  
But...so I think if I work on some little niche that I'm capable of doing, 
like if I'm a second string catcher doesn't mean I think that the guy who's 
playing second base is not doing the right thing.  It's just a division of 
labor.  It's getting more and more important. 
 
EMS:  But do you think going on with the ant analogy, don't you think the 
obstacles that an ant is going to run into depends on what the ant is 
after?  Like some aunts are after just explaining the data, some aunts are 
after linking data with theories, some ants are after having theories that 
have no ad hoc concepts in them.  So depending on these interests that 
would run into different obstacles. 
 
TS:  Yeah.  And the trick in any research is to have some compromise 
between what's doable and what's interesting.  Lots of times you can write 
down things that are too hard for you to do.   
 
EMS:  But whether something's hard to do or interesting really depends on 
what you think... 
 
TS:  Absolutely. 
 
EMS:  Doesn't there have to be...don't you have some bigger picture about 
what economics is about?  What kind of research you should be pursuing? 
 
TS:  Sure, sure.  Yeah, one does. 
 
EMS:  And what is your perspective? 
 
TS:  You mean the grand picture?   
 
EMS:  Yes. 
 
TS:  (Very long pause.)  I don't spend a lot of time thinking about that. I 
think you know it when you see it.  I think a lot of people like it when 
they see, I mean, I certainly admire beautiful pieces of theory, I get most 
excited when they're useful.  Even when I don't do it. But my looking at 
that stuff I think is pretty, doesn't mean it's something I'm going to do, 
or tell very many other people to try to do, because you have to be 
extremely lucky and smart to do something like that.  That's like seeing a 
beautiful painting.  I'm not going to go out and try to start painting.  
It's tricky. 
 
EMS:  Do you feel that you're still learning yourself? 
 
TS:  Yes. 
 
EMS:  Is that what makes it exciting? 
 
TS:  Yes, that's makes it fun.  Yeah, I mean, being an academic, you don't 
have to grow up.   
 
MARY SCHWEITZER ALSO WRITES: 
 
>One other factor, BTW, that pushed HET out of the curriculum -- I 
>really don't want this to sound nativist, I think it's simply a 
>fact -- is the shift to increasing numbers of students coming to 
>the U.S. from abroad, particularly in the '70s and '80s.  Many of 
>these students did not have the institutional or language backgrounds 
>to understand (or give two hoots about) the debates of the past. 
 
        I disagree. I'm one of those students who came to the U.S. from 
abroad in the late eighties. After finishing my undergraduate education in 
the Netherlands, I was left with a strong sense of suspicion about 
abstraction, mathematization, and simplification in economics. Hoping to 
explore alternative approaches, I decided to enroll in graduate school in 
the United States, at Stanford University. There I found no sympathy for my 
suspicions and met with strong support for mathematization. Thomas Sargent, 
one of my teachers, would help me taking derivatives, multiplying matrices, 
and solving differential equations, but was unwilling to entertain any of 
my questions about abstraction in rational expectations economics. This led 
me to explore the history of economic thought on rational expectations 
economics. 
 
                                                --Esther-Mirjam Sent 
 
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