What outsiders to the economics profession don’t know is how poorly trained most mainstream economists are.

Yes they are hyper-skilled users of math and statistical tools, but they have been bred to be incapable of asking/answering fundamental questions such as, “does my way of doing economics make any sense?” Or, “What should I be doing as an economist?”

They are particularly bred to never even ask that most important question, "what is a good economy?"

All they know is that they are highly rewarded for doing what they do.

They have also been bred to be ignorant of, and even fearful of, any approach that differs from the mainstream neoclassical approach. Over the years graduates schools in economics have relentlessly removed from their program almost all exposure to non-mainstream approaches and, indeed, removed any exposure to the history of their own way of thinking.

Their approach to dealing with others who don’t share their approach is the same as a sectarian religious cult: avoid contamination by “the other” and keep “the other” away as far as possible. They ruthlessly stamp out heresy as soon as it appears.

This approach is the exact opposite of what we should expect of those who society turns to for knowledge about the economy.

The public should be concerned that the “top” of the economics profession is more concerned with keeping their departments “pure” from contamination than actually exposing graduate students to a variety of different approaches that might lead to productive theoretical advances.

It is doubtful that the public is served by such a narrow-minded view of economic “research.”

The mainstream economists retort that they do borrow ideas from heterodox economists. But they do so only after the ideas have been laundered through various mechanisms to remove any true heterodox scent. And it can take decades for this laundering to occur (and economics suffers in the meantime). Plus, what the mainstream of the economics profession sees as wacky heterodox ideas are really only those on the outskirts of the mainstream.

Today's economists see John Maynard Keynes as a crazy and wacky guy!

But this narrow awareness of the alternatives to orthodoxy ignores the fact that heterodox economics include folks who are very different from the mainstream. These other folks are completely ignored by the mainstream.

But these various different approaches to economics could be the exact source of important breakthroughs in economic thinking that might benefit the public.

But the mainstream is more concerned with maintaining theoretical purity than taking the chance on happening upon new and important ideas that might help society.

Of course, the risk the mainstream would take by exposing themselves and others to heterodox ideas is that over time people might come to see that some of the heterodox approaches actually make more sense than the current mainstream approach.

From my point of view, the issue is that the PUBLIC is poorly served by the insiders of the economics profession keeping it pure (for their own narrow self-interest).

Despite the hopes of some, success in academia is NOT necessarily based on merit and "better" theories do not always rise to the top.

Indeed, even if orthodox economics was "better" (in a meaningful sense) than mainstream economics, the mainstream is unlikely to believe that. And as they are the gatekeepers, they can keep the barbarians/pagans out.

This then is a damning indictment of the science of economics, since it has proven unable to explain facts on any level more profound than medieval theology, and its theories have failed to rise one above another.

Like I said, phrenomology with computers. Once a promising field, now a junk science.

"Seriously now, is the field of economics even relevant in any meaningful way?"

One example: The Federal Open Market Committee is responsible for the conduct of monetary policy, which has very powerful effects on the economy. Almost all of the members of this powerful body have Docotoral Degrees in Economics. And their training is in neoclassical economics, not heterodox approaches.

Another example: Businesses pay large amount of money for economic forecasts. The people who make such forecasts are economists. Very few of them have a background in heterodox approaches such as Marxism or Instititionalism.

Captain Pudding has yet to explain the relationship between math GE theories and the real world. How can you learn anything about "the real world" from an abstract math model based on false assumptions particularly about the nature of people and about the economy?

Feel free to ignore this question as you did before because, well, you can't answer it. Or, more precisely, you can't answer it in any way that would convince anyone but someone who believed in GE theory.

"following keynoters: Senator James Webb, Paul Krugman, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (senior Dem on Appropriations Cttee), Joseph Stiglitz,"

The fact that two leading mainstream economists, Krugman and Stiglitz are willing to speak at your insititute shows that mainstream economists are more tolerant of heterodox views than you claim. Instead of condemming all of mainstream economics, you should concentrate on the New Classical School to whom this criticism may well be valid.

The New Keynesians do not regard the General Theory as holy writ that has to be accepted in total. The General Theory is to macroeconomics as the Wright Flyer is to airplanes. The Wright flyer was badly designed, and one is surprised that it can fly at all. But it got the basic concepts right. But before airplanes could be useful, major design improvements had to be made. The New Keynesian Economics is to the General Theory, what the modern airplane is to the Wright Flyer. New Keynesians obtain Keynes' results for the short run using alternative theoretical tools, like sticky prices, rather than fixed wages.

The economics profession does not need a Saint Maynard.

No one said you need to treat the GT as holy. My point is that virtually all of the content within GT is rejected by mainstream economics as being wacky and wrong. Dangerous, in fact.

The ONLY thing acceptable in the GT is the notion of involutary unemployment because, maybe, the labor market is not exactly like that in the classical model. Almost everything else is strange stuff.

But the point remains: you can't explain why anyone should care about GE theory. Isn't that pretty odd that the core of the mainstream paradigm can't be justified? Justification by faith alone is what we have. Luther (and to a lesser extent Delong...I mean Augustine of Hippo) would be proud.

It's easy for the Catholic priest to "explain why he accepts the Trinity." He'd lose his job/calling if he didn't.

How's a "mainstream economist" explaining how his acceptance of GE theory helps him keep his job any different?

Now, whether the particular doctrine/theory is true is a whole nother thing, entirely.

Actually the status of Krugman and Stiglitz is a little tenuous. (DeLong too.) They've already been decorated and have tenure, so it's harder for their peers to shoot them down.

It's not for me to fight the theoretical battles; I'm not an academic. We also have some huge policy differences on deficit reduction, privatization, & Social Security, to name a few.

Of course, the General Theory isn't a holy writ, but it does contain many important insights. For example, one of these key insights is the stress on uncertainity (uncertainity in the fundamental Knightian sense, as opposed to probabilistic risk) and the non-neutrality of money. However, this strees on uncertainity & non-neutrality of money was completely lost in the "Neoclassical-Keynesian Synthesis" (i.e. Old Keynesianism) (By the way, the GT was never fundamentally about sticky wages; if anything, flexible wages could increase uncertainity & further diminish the marginal efficiency of capital).

Another point is that economics is path-dependent. If you want to understand New Keynesianism, you have to understand New Classical Economics & the Monetarist Counterevolution. If you want to understand the New Classical Economics, you have to understand the Neoclassical-Keynesian synthesis. So the fact that MIT Keynesianism is based on a model that is very different from the theoretical underpinning of the General Theory is important in understanding the current state of macroeconomic theory.

And yet, Nancy Reagan consulted an astrologer. The Nazi's were big into the occult. The Romans divined from the guts of chickens. All of these approaches would have had a reasonable degree of success from your point of view, and must accordingly be granted the same legitimacy of neoclassical economics.

Businesses do pay large amounts of money for economic forecasts by economists. For instance, Enron, GM, Barrings. They've done so well, don't you think?

The gulf between Marxism, Institutionalism and Neo-Classical really, when you come right down to it, is simply a matter of preference as to the colour of the chicken whose entrails you read.

I'd argue that Post Keynesianism does a much better job of explaning high unemployment in OECD nations, financial crises in the 1990's, & rising global inequality of income than anything in mainstream economics. Read Paul Davidson's Financial Markets, International Money and the Real World and decide for yourself.

Captain Pudding took the time to rate my comment above with a "1" but he also, once again, ran away from the attempt to justify what he believes is true. It is because he/she is unable to provide such a justification (except, I'm sure, that is "what he was taught").

Quoting myself, "Captain Pudding has yet to explain the relationship between math GE theories and the real world. How can you learn anything about "the real world" from an abstract math model based on false assumptions particularly about the nature of people and about the economy?"

The silence speaks volumes. He/her unability is not surprising, however, as mainstream economists are poorly trained as thinkers (but hyper-skilled with math/metrics).

Why is this important? Because Cap'n Pudding, along with other mainstream economists, like to reject heterodox economics as fluffy. But what could be more fluffy than accepting as God's truth a theory--GE theory--without being able to explain why they accept it?

"Quoting myself, "Captain Pudding has yet to explain the relationship between math GE theories and the real world. How can you learn anything about "the real world" from an abstract math model based on false assumptions particularly about the nature of people and about the economy?"

As I said in a previous reply, if you mean the abastract general equilibrium theory that follow from the Arrow-Debreu tradition, I consider this to be of limited relevance. It clears up some technical issues, but is too unrealistic to apply to explaining real world economic behavior. What I am talking about is mainstream macroeconomic models, which are general equilibrium models. Even the General Theory is a general equilibrium model of the economy, although Marshallian, rather than Walrasian.

I posted this to the economics table but it didn't mke the cut so I'm throwing it out here.

Everybody is talking economics including Bryan Caplan (George Mason University, EconLog, The Myth of the Rational Voter) and Will Wilkinson of the Cayto Institute at BloggingheadsTV.

http://bloggingheads.tv/video.php?id=294&rate=1.3&rate=1.2

I gather that you dispute the obvious fact that proper or improper functioning of the economy can be accurately described by the circulation of four humors, and effectively regulating by Federal Bloodletting Board? How obtuse can one get?

Where is my dictionary when I need it?! So Krugman and Stiglitz have tenuous status because they are decorated and have tenure? Does it mean that "tenuous" and "tenure" have the same root?

My 5c about the major dispute: once I have read about an article in economics that showed that slavery was economically efficient in ante-bellum South and Antiles, and that this paper was attacked for its inconvenient conclusion. I think that most probably the paper was correct, and that it is an excellant example that "economically efficient" and "good" is not the same thing. I do not trust theologians to tell me what is good and what is bad, and neither do I trust economists.

In both cases the most intuitive answers are hard to get. Question one: should we kill homosexual caught in the act? Christian theologians either will agree, or perform a lengthy reasoning why not in spite of various passages in the Old and New Testament. Question two: should we leave our super-annuated folks destitute and/or without healthcare once the relevant expenditures raise above the threshold that can be supported without an increase in taxes?

What makes me shudder is that the idea of combining economists and theologians to tell us what to do is already invented, as seen in AEI.

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I was a college freshman.

I took an introductory course in psychology, a subject I thought might interest me. But the department were all behavorists. Operant conditioning, Skinner boxes, cute little rats. Experiments. Basically, the game was trying to learn what the little beasties "preferred" and maybe trying to change those "preferences" by various reinforcement techniques, positive and negative.

I lasted a semester in psychology. What I couldn't get past was that word "preferences". How the hell, I asked my profs, could you determine what the rats preferred when you've jailed them in these damned little boxes and made their lives a kind of hell, as far removed as possible from what a rat might prefer if left to his own devices?

I challenged their right to use the word "preference" in such a situation. Especially when you translated this methodology to its obviously intended target, people. In that case the whole game was who was in control, and all the benevolence of the psych profs (very benvolent fellows all) wasn't worth a damn if those in charge were not benevolent.

This made the profs somewhat uncomfortable and I searched for another major. Never looked back. Don't even know if Skinnerism is taught today, but I had had enough of it.

It seems to me that this is part of the problem here. You have to accept the entire frame of reference of the discipline before it will make sense. Power relationships could not be examined, and yet they determined so much.

I think you're probably pulling my leg, but just in case you're not:

Sometimes theories of which we disapprove actually work.

Please.

This is exactly the same type of goalpost-moving that is engaged in by the standard economics theorists.  It's all in the word "work".  Skinnerism is not an animal-training theory, nor a pet-show methodology.  Yes, apparently even animals like rats may be taught to do various tricks.  But that's a far weaker claim than "Walden Two" made.

The problem is that the unspoken assumption is that the trainer has complete control of the subject.  Just as economics has its assumptions about equilibrium, rational consumers, information, and what not.  Only within these narrow constraints, which aren't applicable in the real world, can such methods be said to "work" - that is be a real solution to real problems.