Monday, January 4, 2010

Distorting the truth to make the case that economists distort the truth?

Hans made me aware of this: In a recent blogpost entitled "What Should Economists Study?" Brad DeLong writes the following:
As one of the students interviewed for the original The Making of an Economist, let me say that there was a distressingly wide gap between what we told Colander and Klamer and what they heard: we were not nearly as stupid and as narrow as they wanted us to be.
Bit of a let-down, since several of their claims seemed to ring true to me, but worth noting. Seems a bit silly to ignore empirical data when it contradicts your hypothesis that economists too frequently ignore empirical data.

BTW - don't recall this book as arguing that economist students were stupid or narrow. It's argument was more that the education they were offered seemed - to them - to be narrow and stupid. As far as I recall from skimming it several years ago.



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