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Emperor, Clothes, etc.
EconLog: Library of Economics and Liberty — Richard Dale writes , thousands of finance research papers are published each year, and yet there have been few if any warnings from the academic community of the incendiary potential of global financial markets. Is it too harsh to conclude that despite the considerable academic resources that go into finance research our understanding of the behaviour of financial markets is no greater than it was in 1929/33 or indeed 1720? As usual, pointer from Mark Thoma . CATEGORIES: Finance: stocks, options, etc. COMMENTS (0) | TrackBack (0) | TRACKBACKS (0 to date) POST A COMMENT Read comments Name ...

links for 2008-11-28
Economist's View — The financial meltdown is an academic crisis too - voxeu.org The Rebirth of Keynes, and the Debate to Come - Robert Reich Are Useful Projects Really Better than Useless Ones? - knzn Obama Picks Volcker to Head New Economic Panel - NYTimes.com The (Tuna) Tragedy of the Commons - NYTimes.com Food Prices Expected to Keep Going Up - NYTimes.com $7.8 Trillion and Counting - The Baseline Scenario The Return of Larry Summers - NYTimes.com

Big dis of the field of academic finance
Newmark's Door — Richard Dale, Emeritus Professor of International Banking at Southhampton University, wrote a book that was poorly reviewed 15 years ago in the Journal of Finance. Apparently, he's still quite irritated by that. So he uses the current financial problems as a jumping-off point to viciously slap the entire field of finance: What we have witnessed in recent months is not only the fracturing of the world’s financial system but the discrediting of an academic discipline. There are some 4000 university finance professors worldwide, thousands of finance research ...

Larry Summers & the role of economics
Stumbling and Mumbling — Larry Summers appointment as head of the National Economic Council has resurrected the controversy about his notorious World Bank memo, in which he argued that African countries were “vastly under-polluted.” For me, though, that episode was a perfect - yes perfect - example of what economists can and should contribute ...

The upcoming war of succession and the future of Macroeconomics!
The visible hand in economics — It appears that economics is on the verge of war … ok maybe I’m being melodramatic - but the change in tone of economists recently (well, actually mainly macroeconomists) has been startling! During the credit crisis, more and more economists have moved towards a panicked position.  However, the first true indication that this might be different than a few little methodological spats came to me from these posts (Econlog and VoxEU). These posts indicated that the very structure of economics was preventing research into valuable fields - we had failed to achieve knowledge by focusing on ...