Forwarded by a friend … this picture alone summarises the problem with the economics profession.
Somebody I know is doing a doctorate degree in economics. In Switzerland, all such candidates have to spend several months at Gerzensee, a luxurious manor house owned by SNB, where they are trained in monetary economics.
It was at this training, where this picture was taken:
Without a prior explanation this image could be seen as if taken in a physics lab.
I think this is an explanation of Becker’s model of racial discrimination.
And the King’s alchemists can turn lead into gold. “Modern Economics,” when treated as a hard science, can be used to justify the fanaticism of the most unsavoury people. For all we know, this “equation” could justify quantitative easing, bailouts and/or outright fascism.
Ah,so that’s where derivatives come from.
This is the problem with modern economic, economists are pretending to be physicists.
Physicists have the power to test hypothesese, make fantastic observations in controlled experiments, and build things up from first principles to give a pretty damn amazing model.
Economics is not like that, we have an understanding of some fundamental axioms, and we have a vague understanding of what people are trying to do, but macroeconomists in particular are usually so keen to sum this up into an equation that they can do some calculus with that the completely miss the moment at which it loses its basis in reality.
I don’t like the term “stick to what you know”, because ambition is the building block of development, but economists need to stop replacing what they know with what they don’t in pursuit of sciencifying their discipline