Re: General Thery seminar

[Greg Nowell <GN842@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul Davidson wrote:

>
>
> As a test Henry, generate a column  of Random numbers -- or copy a series
> off of a randon number Table-- and see that you can always find a moving
> average (deterministic )trend and some random noise variance.  So what does
> it mean?
>
>

Some years ago in the International Studies Quarterly a writer,  criticizing
the mega-historical trend type analysis (long cycles of capitalism,
Kondratieff, etc.) put a series of random numbers connected by a trend line
next to a graph purporting to give a long-cycle explanation of conflict (by
Joshua Goldstein).

He made exactly Paul's point.

> PAUL
> Paul Davidson
> Holly Chair of Excellence in Political Economy
> Editor, JOURNAL OF POST KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS [JPKE]
> Economics Department -- 523 SMC
> University of Tennessee
> Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0550
> email: Pdavidson@xxxxxxx;   phone: (865)974-4221;    fax: (865) 974-4601
> http://econ.bus.utk.edu/Davidson.html

--
Gregory P. Nowell
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science, Milne 100
State University of New York
135 Western Ave.
Albany, New York 12222

Fax 518-442-5298