Re: Policy in Words

[ROSSERJB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx id <01HPVI6OW98G8ZGX91@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; Fri, 28 Apr 1995 14:15:39 -0500 (EST)]

To John Gelles:
     I appreciate your effort to provide the
response that Paul D. (the tortured and tired
one! :-)) has so far been unwilling to provide.
     Actually if I were Paul, and I am guessing
from what I have read in his PKMT (not sent back
to the publisher-----yet :-)), this is what I
would say.  "In the short-run the economy can be
ergodic and that is where 'my' [his] models/policy
analysis are operative. In the long-run, well non-
ergodicity reigns supreme and what the heck!  This
is even very Keynesian:  In the short-run we can
theorize and policyize, but in the long-run we are
all dead!"  Not bad, huh? (any addenda, Paul?)
     Actually what I have found annoying about this
particular contretemps has been that Paul wants to
have it both ways.  "I can be ergodic when I want
to be, but if anybody else dares to suggest a model
that even remotely suggests a nano-possibility of
being ergodic, by gosh by gum, I'll blast them for
their un-Keynesianism!!!"  I find this contradictory
in the extreme, to say the least.
     BTW, I also would like to reinforce certain
remarks of Gonzalo's in regards to "math games."
Yes, math can be used to clarify assumptions and to
see what is really going on in a theory or a policy
proposal, for that matter.  An awful lot of utterly
screwball nonsense is being put forward on the basis
of "intuitively plausible arguments," e.g. all the
drivel supporting the balanced budget amendment.
     But also yes, math has been used even
more frequently to obfuscate and play silly games of
academic one-upmanship.  That certainly is not my
goal as an advocate of taking seriously various kinds
of nonlinear complexity theory in economics.  I
certainly support making whatever math being used be
as simple as possible and communicated
as well as possible to as many people as possible.
Unfortunately, even among the mathematically literate
who feel this way, there is a tendency to be verbally
illiterate thus making for problems.  Cheers!
Barkley Rosser
James Madison University