Re: Sweden -- A few reactions on the N.Y. Times article

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote:

>(a
>source of much anger to many mathematicians to this day,
>although Doug thinks that mathematics is useless for
>economics

Now, Barkley, I don't think that at all. Math is essential to studying,
say, labor markets and income distribution, and I've read a fair amount of
that literature. But it's pretty simple math. What I'm skeptical about is
all the whiz-bang machinery econometricians use, and the latest fads for
complexity/chaos theory. I'm at a loss to understand just what they
contribute, and your defense of applying those fads to financial markets
was hardly convincing. Yeah, the stock market is nonlinear, even allowing
for noise. What, really, does that tell us?

Doug