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Comments on: Marshall’s maths http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2008/03/04/marshalls-maths/ The Visible Hand in Economics Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:34:12 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: Matt Nolan http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2008/03/04/marshalls-maths/#comment-1025 Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:34:12 +0000 http://tvhe.co.nz/?p=271#comment-1025 “Also, how come Bluematter. resides under ‘institutional economics’?”

Institutional is just where I’ve put things that have talked about path dependence or economic history, or seem in some way holistic. I’ve noticed that you like to mention economic history stuff so I slipped you in there – personally I think I need to work on making the economic distinctions on our blog roll clearer 😉

]]> By: rauparaha http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2008/03/04/marshalls-maths/#comment-1024 Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:28:15 +0000 http://tvhe.co.nz/?p=271#comment-1024 Thanks so much for replying and clarifying your position. It seems I wholly misinterpreted your criticism of Marshall’s quote, sorry. I took the spirit of it to be that mathematics is useful for formalising ideas and exploring models, but that we should always try to relate our results to the problem we are trying to solve. In economics that problem is something to do with scarce resources in the real world and so our models should give us come insight that we can express in English.

I do agree with most of your critiques. It reminds me of a quote which I repeat ad nauseum to those who I talk to regularly. The gist is that journal articles should either be theoretical and advance the theory or practical and explain the world. They should never be theoretically practical and explain nothing about the real world using known theory. I fear that sometimes the method of mathematical inquiry is misused to disguise the latter as a real contribution to to the literature.

As to why you’re institutional, I don’t know but I’m sure Web Master Matt will chime in at some stage 🙂

]]> By: datacharmer http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2008/03/04/marshalls-maths/#comment-1023 Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:18:32 +0000 http://tvhe.co.nz/?p=271#comment-1023 An excellent post. Let me make my position clear:

I disagree with 1 because, while mathematics are a very convenient short-hand language, they are also an excellent engine of inquiry. Many insights are arrived at by defining a mathematical model and then see how it behaves, rather than necessarily having an intuitive notion of how it does so and then simply writing in short-hand math.

I disagree with 2 and 5, because the math is useful. It’s also convenient and in many cases neccesary to understand an idea.

I don’t disagree with 4, but I don’t find it necessary either. Lots of interesting work in economics is more ‘technical’ and does not readily apply to reality (only as a contituent part of more complete models), so I wouldn’t characterise all papers that do not naturally generate practical examples as useless.

Also, how come Bluematter. resides under ‘institutional economics’? (not that I mind, just curious 🙂

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