Kotlicoff notes, "We economists are the worst offenders here. It's our theory, and we should know better. But too many of us don't see, ignore this emperor's true state of dress. "-
Kotlicoff has made this statement because he had recently reviewed 3 sets of papers with 3 different views on the same subject""all using elaborate regression techniques & coming to opposite opinions by using different definitions of similar terms.
When he talked to the writers of these papers whom he had severely critiqued, Kotlicoff noted that all three well-known economists had responded that his critique was on the mark.
They, however, felt compelled to deal in such confusing narrations because the articles that are prominent in the world of political economy deal with such crazy usages of regressions and terms these days, i.e. terms which are seldom equivalent in definition. That is they are not in any roughly equivalent; thus, the authors posit to explain and spin data""rather than to improve and standardize terms and treatments.
This is not only a problem for the world of social sciences, finance, and economy!
This failure to use clarifying terms and to adequately use economic terminology & analysis properly is more than simply slipshod in the world of academia. It has been worse in the press and in popular understanding of daily American spending issues over the past 50 years, i.e. since the Chicago University boys took over the narration of American economic policy and national & urban planning in the 1960s and 1970s.
Meanwhile , Kotlicoff is correct when he says, "If establish academic economists won't focus on fundamentals, who will?"-
Kotlicoff concludes that his only hope now lies with new generations of economists who are "beholden to no one"-.
In short, this is a time in history when a new set of paradigms need to re-look at the mismanagement of the past 40 years and begins making lucid and clear descriptions of what could happen in 40 years if America doesn't stop pretending and realize that a mixed managed and free market is the only way to go. Americans need to start using and naming social and numerical phenomena as they really are""i.e. part of the truth of the world, which we Americans need to learn to understand about 500% better than we have done in recent decades.
NOTESKotlicoff, Laurence, "The Emperors Dangerous Clothes"-, Economist's Voice , April 2007, pp. 1-5, http://www.bepress.com/ev/vol5/iss2/art3/?sending=10180
1 | 2
