----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- The problem I have with the specific language economists use is there is very little awareness of the subtle (and not-so-subtle) shifts in meaning over time. Economists speak and write as if the definition of "markets" is the SAME no matter who you read within the profession, and no matter when the person wrote. Now, they probably KNOW better underneath, but that is the way they behave as professionals. It is accurate to ask, "What did Marshall mean by the word 'markets'?" It is very misleading to ask, or answer, "Economists mean such-and-so when they use the term 'markets'." Yet the latter is more often the language of economics. After decades of using the same words in many different contexts, the result is dangerous. Scholarship is an ongoing conversation -- not merely between researchers in the present, but also between the past and the present. When there is no awareness of the strong differences in the explicit meanings of common words, this conversation loses strength and accuracy. Even more problematic, the specific meaning of economic terms is not stable between economic specialties (something you would only notice if you read literature in multiple specialties). As long as the profession insists on the phrase "Economists mean such- and-such when they say ..." the result is confusion not only between economists and outsiders, but among economists themselves -- and a professionally inability to directly address this confusion. In a profession that trades on information, that information must be trustworthy. When language is used in such a careless manner, it damages the credibility of this "information market." The answer to "what do economists mean by endogeneity and exogeneity" is "it depends, and it has changed over time and within different contexts. Most economists TALK as if they don't udnerstand this (but when you press them they admit that of course they do) -- what concerns me more is the (growing) number of economists who don't seem to understand this at all. Mary Schweitzer ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]