October 31st, 2011 at 12:12AM

The Trouble with Economics

Economics, the most influential social science, suffers from flaws that limit its insight and compromise its authority. The narrowness and shallowness of its contributions to the debate about the recent economic crisis and the subsequent weak recovery have made these flaws manifest.

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4 notes #unger#mangabeira unger#dani rodrik#brad de long#stiglitz#shleifer#summers#economics#economic analysis#criticism of economics#economic alternatives#alternative economics#economic institutions#economic crisis#markets#market economy
October 12th, 2011 at 10:05AM

Misusing Keynes

What did Keynes really teach? The influence of vulgar Keynesianism on academic orthodoxy as well as on practical discourse has been so great that it threatens to obscure the distinctive core of Keynes's developed economic theory. Fortunately, the theory is unencumbered by the toy mathematics that has served so much subsequent economic theorizing as a surrogate for causal explanation. I interpret this theory as organized around nine propositions. The first three propositions have to do with the themes intimately connected in Keynes’s ideas of money, uncertainty, and illusion.

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14 notes #unger#roberto unger#keynes#karl marx#adam smith#dani rodrik#brad de long#larry summers#economics#economic crisis#financial crisis#recession#depression#economic slump#fiscal stimulus#monetary stimulus#economic institutions#economic growth