Re: ad hocery

[BILL MITCHELL <ECWFM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alan (replying to abu) said:

>Well, in my experience the charge is very common. However, for
>this very reason I cannot associate it with anyone or any
>writing in particular. In my experience, the charge is roughly
>synonymous with the "charge" that the models are without
>explicit "microfoundations", but with an added normative
>element of disapproval.

well i have often had this charge levelled at me, especially in my
early years as an academic. it came b/c i couldn't see much point in
mucking around with taking derivatives of simple  linear functions and
claiming the results said anything much about anything. that sort of
stuff was easy to do, pretty banal and revealed very little. but it
was the high altar of N/c economics.

but as i point out to my students that the claim that N/c is rigourous
due to its use of first order conditions and the like does not even
stand on its own  rules. Take the Labour Supply function. the theory
cannot clearly define the shape (and slope) of the function. the rigour
comes to nothing. you can take as many derivatives and solve for zeroes as
you like - but ultimately the essential result (within that framework - not
that i would accept the real wage-employment labour market representation for a
moment), has to rely on .....yes, and ad hoc assumption.

ad hoc being an _augmentation_ to the first and second order results.

and it is interesting that N/c choice theory is reliant on empirical results
for any determinancy. But then again, that doesn't bother them too much
either. Most of them conclude that it is plausible that the SE>YE and so the
intersection is guaranteed. (and of-course this intersects with the equally
false MPT curve). And drop it out that empirical work supports this. Well it
does nothing of the kind and they know it. Don't let the facts get in the way
of a good story.

but the point is that this is ad hocery.

models can still have micro foundations without differentiability andg generate
self-contained results which can then be looked at against the stylised facts.
i don't call them ad hoc, b/c i reject outright the benchmark which defines ad
hocery in this sense.

further i reject as meaningful the urgency of establishing "micro" foundations.
the house i study is built on macro foundations. and i think the tendancy to
argue it out about which paradigm has the best micro level analysis misses the
point completely that the economy is driven by the aggregates. we are sheep
after all.

and that is the biggest thing i gleaned keynes and which i wish had have been
developed more - the supremacy of the aggregate over the powerlessness ofthe
individual. of-course, marx had said it all before anyway, but he wasn't a
gentleman like JMK.

kind regards
bill
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