Noah Smith says
Economists study gender relations in the workplace, racial gaps, changes in labor contracts, early childhood education, minimum-wage policy, regional opportunity gaps, automation and the future of jobs, and a vast array of other highly important, immediately relevant topics.To which I respond:
Micro micro micro micro micro micro micro, and a vast array of other micro.
Noah says
... many theorists now prefer to work with game theory [which] can encompass things like wage bargaining, fraud and lots of other things ...Micro micro and lots of other micro.
Noah says
Auction theory, random-utility models, matching theory, gravity-trade models, and some other mathematical theories have enjoyed enormous quantitative predictive success ...I'm gonna make a guess here and say: Micro micro micro micro and some other micro.
And Noah says
... a version of consumer theory ... is very useful and powerfully predictive for all sorts of real-world applications, from transportation planning to marketing to disaster planning and more.From micro to micro to micro, and more.
Hey, disaster planning could be pretty damn important. Even I can see that. But it's not economics. At least, it isn't macro. When the shit hit the fan a decade back we got a financial crisis, a "great" recession, and double-digit unemployment. Macro, macro, and macro.
1 comment:
At The Economist:
"Economists are at their least useful when a measuring stick should not be used at all. They have been known to calculate, for example, the financial gains from achieving gender equality. But gender equality has an intrinsic value, regardless of its impact on GDP."
And anyway, it's micro :)
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