Tom Walker wrote: >Thanks for serving up yet another example of the teflon effect, Jim. The >critique has been that econometrics CAN'T show that the economic data are or >aren't "consistent with one's theory" -- especially if one's theory deals >with non-trivial issues (such as the possibility of IRREGULARITIES in >economic behavior?). If you're saying that the critique of econometrics is >unfair, then you'll have to do better than to simply assert the contrary. > >In some ideal unpoliticized world, econometrics might be more useful and >less tendentious than they are in this non-ideal highly politicized world. >But I'd suggest that the main cultural function of econometrics in _this_ >world is to obfuscate the politics and to present non-mainstream analyses >with formidable barriers to entry into the economic discourse. At the Value Club's session at the EEA meetings in March 1998, Bertell Ollman gave a paper whose message essentially was that economists - then-present company obviously not excepted - had no idea how alienated they were. In other words, value theory and/or econometrics can be read as symptoms of an alienated, depoliticized relation to the social world. Any defense of econometrics that doesn't deal with this is alienated from its own alienation! Doug
