Re: Keynes and competition

["Alan G. Isaac" <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 25 May 2001, Harry Veeder wrote:
> I think John is saying that many economists  engage in poor analysis
> because they don't recognize the difference between the stuff of
> economic theories and the stuff of economic reality. They manipulate
> variables according to a specific explanatory theory without really
> understanding what the variables represent or whether such variables
> even correspond to anything in the real world.  I wish economists
> would stop and think about the nature of their variables.

Why not read what they are writing and discover (lo and behold!)
that they are quite aware of this problem?  Then go out and try
to do some empirical work yourself and learn something about the
pragmatic decisions that must be made in trying to understand
the world.
Alan Isaac

PS For example:
``There are always aspects of economic life that are left out of any
simplified model. There will therefore be problems on which it throws
no light at all; worse yet, there may be problems on which it appears
to throw light, but on which it actually propagates error. It is
sometimes difficult to tell one kind of situation from the other. All
anyone can do is to try honestly to limit the use of a parable to the
domain in which it is not actually misleading, and that is not always
knowable in advance.''
from _Growth Theory: An Exposition_ by Robert Solow.