From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: m <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, pen-l <pen- [EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date sent: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 18:16:51 -0400 Subject: [PEN-L:25197] Economics as religion Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>At times Nelson seems to deny the prospect of a value-free analysis. Here, I think he goes too far. Positive economics is alive and well in academia, and the economic paradigm of choice within constraints is being pushed steadily forward to new frontiers of explanation (including religion). There are no hidden values here; there is no sub-text. There is a simple desire to explain the world as it is in a more understandable way. The relevant question to these scholars is not how but why? Most of the work that Nelson discusses in the modern Chicago approach and in the New Institutional Economics is this type of analysis. And while understanding the world per se may actually lead to social change, I do not think this correlation is thought about or stressed very much by these analysts. Their focus is on understanding, not changing, the world. Positive economics is alive and well and living in Austria? What a crock. Show me any orthodox micro analysis that isn't rife with normative assumptions and I will genuflect with humiliation. I have no worries that I will be so obliged. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
