Thanks to Jim Devine for the nice Thomas Palley quote:
"scholarship that proceeds within the convention is free of these burdens,
since the underlying assumptions and framework are taken for granted."
It seems to me though that length is not the biggest part of the
problem. Daniel Ellsberg's 1959 paper on the systematic utility
violating behaviour that results from ambiguity couldn't have been
much shorter or clearer in its challenge of the conventional underlying
assumptions and framework.
Short or long, von Mises' article on socialist calculation relied on a
"social welfare function" that was already obsolete when Barone concocted
it. I wouldn't give two cents for the argument. The generous reception
given to von Mises testifies to the insatiable desire of
economists to shut out well-established arguments and observations that
make it difficult for them to cling to their copiously disproven
"underlying assumptions and framework."
Feldstein's 1967 "Specification of the Labour Input in the Aggregate
Production Function," is stupid in many ways, but most importantly it is
several orders of magnitude less deserving than Denison's 1961
"Measurement of Labor Input: Some Questions of Definition and the Adequacy
of Data." Guess which of the two has been received as a "standard
treatment" of the issues?
Tom Walker
