[PEN-L:30084] McCloskey & Post-Autism

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: McCloskey & Post-Autism

Gene Coyle writes: >The Deirdre McCloskey piece in the current issue seems to me to be defensive and missing the point.  I think I could pass the test [s]he poses at the end -- I did have the Stigler book as my undergraduate text, and loved it at the time.  I don't think it has much, if anything, to do with economics.  ...<

The piece by McCloskey reminded me of a basic point: "autistic economics" is not identical to "bad economics," so that one can embrace bad economics without autism. (However, I'd say that _all_ autistic economics is bad.)

McCloskey opposes "autistic economics" of Debreu, Roemer, _et al_ by embracing the empirically-oriented Chicago-style economics of Stigler _et al_. She's right that the latter isn't autistic, but it's really bad stuff, ideological, dishonest, etc.

Perhaps we should invent the category "sociopathic economics" to refer to the empirically-oriented version of Chicago economics. After all, the DSM-IV, the diagnostic bible of psychologists, has more disorders than simply those on the autistic spectrum.

(Strictly speaking, sociopathy or psychopathy is called "anti-social personality disorder.")

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Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine