Hey Robert,

Cheers for the suggestion – I will do! My prior is always that no economist is perfect, but Friedman, Solow, and Samuelson did piles to improve the discipline – it will be interesting to get a bit more historic perspective. I remember reading a book from the early 1970s on monetary economics, and the entire thing was about expectations – it changed my perspective on the way economists used to think back then as well, and made it clearer that viewing the discipline as a “straight linear progression” isn’t very fair on many of the incredibly good historic thinkers.

It was entertaining to see a whole lot of you smart guys debate economic concepts through the lens of what these authors were actually saying. Good fun!

I strongly suggest you read his working papers on the subject (I have read 3). I just click the link you have here for the url oxford.ac.uk etc then search for Forder at that site. They have dramatically changed my assessment of Friedman’s intellectual honesty (I always thought he was slippery but now have the impression that he came very close to simply lying). Of course even aside from the critique of the Phillips curve (which contained nothing new to Samuelson and Solow or, for that matter, Phillips) he was a great economist with many wonderful insights. But the 1968 critique seems to have stated the conventional wisdom at the time and to be anything but a scientific revolution.

That is a neat article, cheers. I found this interestnig:

But, for economists who actively engage the public, it is hard to influence hearts and minds by qualifying one’s analysis and hedging one’s prescriptions. Better to
assert one’s knowledge unequivocally, especially if past academic honors certify one’s claims of expertise. This is not an entirely bad approach if it results in sharper public debate.

The dark side of such certitude, however, is the way it influences how these economists engage contrary opinions. How do you convince your passionate followers if other, equally credentialed, economists take the opposite view? All too often, the path to easy influence is to impugn the other side’s motives and methods, rather than recognizing and challenging an opposing argument’s points. Instead of fostering public dialogue and educating the public, the public is often left in the dark.And it discourages younger, less credentialed economists from entering the public discourse.

I see this as a bit more dangerous again, as I note here:

http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2013/06/20/on-economics-as-method/

The easy “answer” is to exaggerate our faith in our own results – but this makes arguments vulnerable to things we know will go wrong, conditional conclusions will be wrong as we never define an entire system. Fundamentally, we can’t forecast, and reasonable economists will disagree on (at least) the basis of normative judgments, and if we exaggerate the strength of our results we just end up in a situation where a single failure can undermine a broader set of useful economic ideas and principles!

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-declining-quality-of-public-economic-debate-by-raghuram-rajan.

Not sure if I agree with his last line about there being more respect in academia, not my experience.