Re: [Pen-l] Duesenberry

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

of course, the Chicago school isn't the only school. But it has had
much much too much influence during the neoliberal era. Its ideology
served the powers that be. Maybe things are changing?

On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 7:04 PM, Michael Perelman
<michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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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-- 
Jim Devine / "If heart-aches were commercials, we'd all be on TV." -- John Prine
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