yazadjal.com

In a very readable article published in the American Economic Review (way back in 1998), Ronald Coase outlines the problems with the way that Economists do Economics.

He seems too fall back on Marshall’s old self-critique:

“the Mecca of the economist lies in economic biology rather than in economic dynamics.”

But what amused me about Coase’ piece, were these two quotes:

What this comes down to is that economists think of themselves as having a box of tools but no subject matter. It reminds me of two lines from a modern poet (I forget the poem and the poet but the lines are indeed memorable):

I see the bridle and the bit all right

But where’s the bloody horse?

The modern poet refered to is Ronald Knox

And he ends the article with:

This change [to the ways of New Instituitional Economics] will not come about, in my view, as a result of a frontal assault on mainstream economics. It will come as a result of economists in branches or subsections of economics adopting a different approach, as indeed is already happening. When the majority of economists have changed, mainstream economists will acknowledge the importance of examining the economic system in this way and will claim that they knew it all along.

Emphasis added in both quotes

I found this article via Cláudio Djissey Shikida’s site “The Dark Side of Force