What Good Are Economists Anyway? | Hacker News Reader

What Good Are Economists Anyway?

businessweek.com

12 pointsccarpenterg10 comments

I would like to point out one of the values of economics is to study what the effects of a policy change would be. "How does increasing the H1B program change the US economy?" or "How much is the price of heroin changed by drug policy?"

Granted, some of this seems obvious, but I suspect what's "common knowledge" is shaped by the field. F=MA seems obvious now, but it is still a new idea. Ditto the law of supply and demand.

Economists today are in a way the scientists of the renaissance. Back then it was the church that couldn't accept the world view of Copernicus and Galilei. Today it is the politicians that won't accept free trade and long-term fiscal responsibility. I wonder if the day will come when politicians accept economics the way they accept gravity?

Disclaimer: I don't really mean to compare economics with the hard sciences, just the way they are treated.

As you've hinted there's a reason that economics is treated that way. At this point, economics simply relies on too many other fields; many of which are also at their infancy. When you think about it, we're having a hard enough time predicting stuff like weather; let alone something that is the sum of all of that and more...

Um, some economists really did see the whole market crash coming.

I'd love to see a thorough account of who did and did not predict this event. The most I've seen was Peter Schiff being mocked on cable news for arguing there would be a bust. Nouriel Roubini correctly predicted this as well. Who else?

http://www.fool.com/investing/dividends-income/2009/01/09/fo...

Summary:

# John Paulson

# Nouriel Roubini

# Meredith Whitney

# Nassim Nicholas Taleb

# Peter Schiff

John Paulson is not an economist, he got an mba but you don't go to business school to learn something, you go there to get a passport and connections. Be that as it may, he is definitely not an economist but a hedge fund investor.

Taleb is something of an anomaly. He is your prototypical anti-economist. GIven how he rages about economists, I'm surprised to find him on this list. If someone wants to provoke him, send him this page... ;)

Roubini is an economist but very definitely not mainstream.

The others I don't know.

> John Paulson is not an economist

Why does it matter?

Either he's useful or he's not.

> Um, some economists really did see the whole market crash coming.

That's not enough. They have to also not predict crashes that didn't occur. (False positives and false negatives are important.)

And, it would be nice if they predicted somewhat smaller, more frequent events. If they can only predict an event that occurs every 50 years....

It is interesting to know the economists who predicted market crash from the present Obama administration.

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