Kommentare zu: Markets with Search Costs — Nobel Prize in Economics?!

Von: Christoph

Christoph — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 00:13:26 +0000

Oh dear! You caught me being polemic there Matze! I agree that mathematically modeling behavior that is trivial to everyday thinking can still be useful. I think my perpetual criticism with economic theory is which aspects of human behavior they started their models with, and which ones are the "adding some slight extras" aspects that are only now being "discovered". You don't have to be a hard core constructivist to agree that economists have been working with a heavily biased take on reality for a long time. And never (as far as I know) have they argued what makes it useful to choose these abstractions over others. (I'll try and post some elaboration on this usefulness criterion soon).

Von: Matze

Matze — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 06:47:41 +0000

Well, Christoph, it is true that a lot of time is spent and has been spent getting more realistic assumptions into economic models (often including common sense). And it's good like that! It's good and it's non-trivial. Because economic models are usually necessary where you want quantitative predictions or where there are a few "common sense arguments" going in different directions and you want to see which effects prevail. That's what the models of D., M. and P. are there for, for the labor market or other markets. And it's not such an easy thing to come up with good economic models. Unfortunately, journalists often don't understand this and then we get statements that are awfully close to Bauman's cartoons... Greetings from Amsterdam!