Can the economics profession ever be made whole?

(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.

Paul Romer is doing heroic work trying to understand what happened to the economics profession:

I had a twitter exchange with Luis Garicano that was prompted by that post. It illustrates what my private conversations have been like.

To make this exchange more readable, I have tried to order it in threads, with each response indented just below the tweet that seems to have prompted it. As a result, the order of the tweets is slightly different from the actual chronological order. The date is a link that should take you back to the actual tweet.

Paul,what many of us find bewildering is that Lucas is probably the most thoughtful,deep,transparent modeler in the profession. — Luis Garicano (@lugaricano) July 31, 2015

I agree. There is a puzzle. At the beginning of the rational expectations revolution he was as you write. Something changed. — Paul Romer (@paulmromer) August 1, 2015

Luis, pls look at presentation of bounded model in Lucas-Moll paper. Am I missing something? — Paul Romer (@paulmromer) August 1, 2015

Sure unbounded support not a great assumption.But in whole career Lucas less guiltily of ‘mathiness’ than 99% of his peers. — Luis Garicano (@lugaricano) August 1, 2015

OK to consider unbounded if done transparently. Problem is calling model with unbounded support for t != 0 a bounded model. — Paul Romer (@paulmromer) August 1, 2015

agree that should have been transparently laid out. — Luis Garicano (@lugaricano) August 1, 2015

What freshwater sympathizers say: “everybody does it.” “Even more” But where are the examples from outside freshwater camp? — Paul Romer (@paulmromer) August 1, 2015

OMG.You need to read some micro. Pick average GT piece. Watch your feet for the traps.

Post external references

  1. 1
    http://paulromer.net/feynman-integrity/
Source