"Too much Maths, too little History: The problem of Economics"
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Channel: LSESU Economics Society
Views: 110,748
Rating: 4.8908916 out of 5
Keywords: Lord Robert Skidelsky, Dr. Ha-Joon Chang, Francesco Caselli, Steve Pishcke, James Foreman-Peck, maths economics, economic history, maths history, economics society, LSE economics, LSE economic history, economic history society, Chang, Caselli, Pishcke, LSE, London School of Economics, Mathematics and Economics, Mathematics, Economics
Id: 6rXBBqMmIP8
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Length: 97min 10sec (5830 seconds)
Published: Fri Dec 18 2015
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Yes, as an economics undergraduate, you only crank out essays full of formulas. It is a well known fact.
Yes, the fetishization of mathematics is pretty bad in economics (formulas like Solomon-Swan model, which are completely unpractical) but history doesn’t need to be taught, if you are in economics, it’s implied that you like to read or you won’t survive.
You also need to analyze trends in history and impacts of policies, that is backwards and forwards in time (like backwards & forwards testing in forex)
You should really check out Tony Lawson, economy professor in Cambridge.
https://youtu.be/b_vMLHis5cE
Skidelsky is a hero, and his criticism is entirely accurate, but I'm with Steve Keen on this one. There isn't too much math in economics, there's too little. The insistence of economists on "praising math as a pathway rigorous elegant laws" and them "mistaking beauty clad in impressive souding mathematics for truth" is caused by their lack of education in and inability to understand complex math that would actually be capable of describing reality. The problem is not the use of math in itself, the problem is that the math on which economic theory is founded is bullshit.