In case anyone was wondering, SLATE published my letter about
Paul Krugman's trashing of the Kuttner/Robert Reich/James
Galbraith school of economics. Their edited version of my letter
wasn't too far from what I said (which raises my respect for
SLATE). Krugman and Galbraith had a bigger debate (which is quite
interesting) in the more central pages of SLATE. In addition,
they e-published my additional letter. Here it is, in the edited
form:
Devine Response
I would like to clarify a point I made in an "E-Mail to the
Editors" that SLATE published last week. My e-mail responded
to Paul Krugman's "Economic Culture Wars," a polemic
against more "literary-minded" economists like James K.
Galbraith. Krugman responded to my e-mail in his "Dialogue"
with Galbraith ("Who's the Real Economist?").
The point I tried to make in my e-mail was that Krugman
confuses mathematical rigor with science. I have no criticism
of the former (and use it myself), except to note that many
important issues cannot be quantified. Instead, I believe we
need a version of the "serenity prayer": Economists need the
skills to do quantitative research, the knowledge needed for
qualitative research, and the wisdom to know when each is
appropriate and what its limits are.
Science, on the other hand, involves avoiding a dogmatic
attachment to any method of analysis. It also entails being
open to reading and respecting ideas one disagrees with. This
involves, among other things, avoiding criticizing someone's
book without reading it simply because the author is a lawyer
and not an economist, as Krugman has done with Robert
Reich's The Work of Nations.
A scientific attitude also involves eschewing the
glorification of the self-appointed and self-promoting academic
pecking order of "Big Name" schools and authors. This kind
of glorification might be justified if economics were actually
like physics, with a clear ability to predict the behavior of our
subject matter so that we could objectively decide which
economists were better than others. Having attended two Big
Name schools, I know that we can't take anybody's work for
granted. Some of these Nobel Prize winners don't want to deal
with empirical reality at all.
My irritation with the adulation of Big Names does not
arise from my lack of fame, or from my working at a small
university (which gives me freedom from "publish or perish": I
can write what and when I like, rather than having to "crank it
out"). On the contrary, it comes from my experience with many
colleagues who have jumped from fad to fad, from rational
expectations to New Keynesianism (a k a monetarism), without
any kind of historical perspective, just an eye to what the
economics celebrities are saying. It surprises me to see a Big
Name economic journalist like Krugman following this trend,
and, further, using it to discourage dissent within the
profession.
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ.
7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA
310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way
and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
