Re: [Pen-l] Duesenberry

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here are a couple of paragraphs from The Invisible Handcuffs:

In fact, the Chicago style of economics is famous for rejecting empirical 
evidence out of hand.  Deirdre McCloskey, a former Chicago faculty member, 
recounts how people who used data that called the theory into question 
would "be met by choruses of 'I can't believe it' or 'It doesn't make 
sense'."  Milton Friedman's own Money Workshop at Chicago in the late 1960s 
and the early 1970s was a case in point" (McCloskey 1985, p. 140).  Melvin 
Reder, another Chicago faculty member, offered further insight in the way 
that Chicago refuses to give ground in the face of evidence that calls the 
micro foundations into question: 

"Chicago economists tend strongly to appraise their own 
research and that of others by a standard that requires [inter alia] that 
the findings of empirical research be consistent with the implications of 
standard price theory ....  The major objective is to convert non 
economists to their way of thinking ....  However imaginative, answers that 
violate any maintained hypothesis of the paradigm, are penalized as 
evincing failure to absorb training.  [Reder 1982, pp. 13, 18, and 19] 

Charles Kindleberger, who was a distinguished economist from MIT, observed 
that in Chicago, "Modifying the theory was the last resort, evaded as long 
as possible" (Kindleberger 2000, p. 235 n). 

 -- Michael 
Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
michaelperelman.wordpress.com
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