What school of economics were you taught in college?

It has been enough years since I made the judgement that I no longer remember why it was made in the first place. Part of it may be that pursuing laissez-faire capitalism and very low rates of tax seems to be a horrible idea on a number of levels. I am open to having my mind changed by new insights or experiences though, of course. When in doubt about economic questions - which is quite common - I presently turn to the Chicago school for answers but take those findings with a grain of salt since I distrust some of the fundamental assumptions that school makes.

Since I am generally disinterested in the subjects of macro and microeconomics, please understand that there is not a great deal of motivation on my part to proactively study the alternative schools in great depth to develop stronger opinions about them. I do not claim to be an authority on these matters and am merely expressing my thoughts and intuition here.

 

Well, college tries to teach you economics, but you learn the most about economics and more likely political economics in your working life. If you are sane, you will question why you are taxed so damn much. The answer is to pay for those that payed those taxes before. The problem is you won't see a penny of that. I know that and knew that when I graduated college. I suggest you do the same. :You will pay for sometime yet to come, but count on it not being there. I want to stress now, this is a socialistic policy. The fact that you will pay now, and not see any of that money. And there is nothing you can do about it.

 

This is nonsense. Economics, as a discipline, is highly valued by the private sector because it teaches core skills such as quantitative methods. Political economy, however, is more useful for understanding general economic outcome (an issue that employers aren't interested in as their motivation is purely focused on economic rent; e.g. they don't need to know the Marxist and Institutionalist approaches to discrimination, they will just naturally evolve to 'crowding' certain groups further down the hierarchy)

 

I couldnt' agree more. That drives me up a wall. The fact that an American must work till May to just pay off his/her taxes is ridiculous. 'Tis a hard situation to deal with, and I feel that we most likely won't see a ton of change, considering that Congress generally consists of older people who wouldn't even think about cutting social security entitlements.

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Aye as well. Double majoring in Business and Economics is highly encouraged and very popular at my university because it sets you apart and gives one more insights "as a whole" into the economy, which aids one's decisions in business.

 

My school is primarily leftist, so in macro we mainly learn Keynesianism, although our professors try to give other schools; new classical, monetarist (even though I don't really accept monetarist as a separate school from Keynesianism), classical, and a tad of supply-side.

There's also a very open Marxist at my school. That'll be interesting.

 

Hated that stuff with a passion. Everything 'wrong' with economics was summed up with that sub-school!

 

The grain of truth in New Classical is rational expectations. While they take it way too far, the idea that economic actors (I believe primarily on the firm side, (I'd bet that most labor markets, particularly ones without unions don't take these factors too much into consideration)) take a large amount of relevant information into account is an intelligent assumption, they take it way too far. It's the idea of near-perfect optimization and information that all neo-classical schools (including Keynesianism) suffer from.

The existence of business cycles that last longer than a month should be enough to disprove new classical economics.

 

Couldn't disagree more! Rational expectations has spawned a pile of bobbins designed only to piddle about with the likes of vertical phillips curves. It helped create a delusional 'macroeconomic' attitude, where perceived 'microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics' was judged to be the 'solution to all our woes'

Behavioural economics is much more fruitful.

 

Why wouldn't a portion economic actors take policy and a wide variety of variables into consideration?

Behavioral economics is informative on a micro-level, but thusfar I don't believe that anything within that line of study has yielded much useful on a macro level. Psychology has always been too shaky a science for my taste.

 

Behavioural economics shows that we adopt heuristics.

Because there is no simple 'microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics'. Post-Keynesianism comes closest. The theory spawned by the rational expectations bobbins only encouraged a shed load of useless macroeconomic prance

 

Neat

That doesn't answer my question

 

It did. Heuristics refers to bounded rationality and therefore kicks rational expectations in the knackers. Adaptive expectations becomes more realistic. However, I wouldn't refer to that either as that also is used for vertical phillips curve guff

 

And yet... This still does not answer my question... I'm very surprised by that.

 

You can stamp your foot as much as you want, but the use of heuristics does demonstrate the stupidity within the rational expectations approach. The only entertainment in it is how you've been so easily manipulated by the macroeconomic merry-go-round. There's nearly, but not quite, irony in it!

And the understanding of behaviour and how we use information? That's several volumes worth!

 

Yea. Thinking that economic actors who seek profit would use available information to help them do that is being fooled... What a joke.

This is improper English

 

If someone believes we can use constrained maximisation to explain economic outcome then they might as well be dribbling in the corner. Bounded rationality is the norm. The macroeconomic models spawned by the stupidity of new classicalism/new keynesianism only led to the 'oops, didn't see that coming' post-crisis result

 

Perhaps if you were capable of reading what the person has actually said, or of responding to what was written, I would take what you have to say seriously.

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Perhaps if you were capable of reading what the person has actually said, or of responding to what was written, I would take what you have to say seriously.

 

Try to respond to what is said. I won't find blubbering entertaining

 

Foster Business School, with courses in econ from UW Dept. of Econ. Typically economics is taught in business schools.

 

What aspects? Is there any critical appraisal of the theory of the firm?

 

That encompasses a range of theories, but you'd think most business schools cover it to varying degrees. Foster does. Why do you ask?

 

And I should add, I consider economics the philisophical branch of business. I'm a marketing guy and like hard data.

For example: let's say your car wash or espresso stand is in need of more sales, due to rising occupancy and/or utilty costs, or whatever. What economics theory solves your problem?

See what I'm saying?

 

It originates from philisophy and political economy. However, its a multi-disciplinary subject that goes way beyond the business discipline.

 

Sure; it's economics and not business. I'd think that's pretty obvious. Also, I'm not sure how political economics comes into play too greatly in the Theory of the Firm. Did your college / grad school experience go into it pretty deeply and make a connection that I may have missed? If so, I'd be curious what they taught. Mind touching on it? Thanks.

 

Its how you see political economy. A political economic analysis of a topic will typically be pluralist in design, with the approach focused on compare/contrast of different schools of thought. That can lead to interesting links. For example, the Coasian analysis into the firm (the origins of transaction cost theory whereby firms are islands of planning in a market sea) has surprisingly been linked with Marx (despite its origins being about trying to give neoclassical economics a credible theory of the firm)