Answer to Sven

[Paul Davidson <pdavidson@xxxxxxx>]

> Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 15:51:03 -0500
> To: Sven R Larson <slarson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> From: Paul Davidson <pdavidson@xxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: [Fwd: nobel]
>
> At 02:06 PM 10/10/02 -0400, you wrote:
>
>
> > Honestly, Paul, anyone with 300-level
> > economics, and particular with
> > graduate training, knows this. You're breaking through open doors.
> > Even my son, 8 years old, knows that it makes no sense to say that
> > if
> > your right hand is in boiling water and your left hand is on ice
> > you
> > are on average doing pretty OK. 
>
>
> Dear Sven:  I never did beat my wife---or your 8 eight year old son
> -- so stop framing your queries in terms of "when did you stop
> beating your wife questions?"  I am not saying that we are
> drawing one observation from the boiling water universe and the second
> from the ice universe.  I am saying something much more profound --
> namely there may not be one (or even a finite number of universes of
> realizations that observations are being drawn from.
>
> Paul
>
> > So let's skip that and talk about how
> > we can actually approach the world beyond the armchair. I have a
> > review of Truman Bewley's book "Why Wages Don't Fall During a
> > Recession" in the last ROPE. Read it, then read the book. Bewley
> > shows
> > that using the right kind of empirical tools you CAN grasp the
> > world
> > in a way that suits a Post Keynesian perspective.
> >
> > > Crude statistical analysis is bad statistics and deserves to be
> > recognized
> > > as such.  Observatiuon and statistical analysis is not the
> > same.  As a
> > > biochemist I was always warned that a column of data that others
> > collected
> > > was merely a column of numbers-- and not information about the real
> > world [
> > > [as those who have been following the recent several decade
> > long
> > > disclosures of fabrication of  lab book observations by
> > eminent  and up
> > > coming scientists has revealed.  and like Enron that is just
> > the tip of the
> > > iceberg in the natural science-- and econometrics starts even off
> > worse,
> > > since the lab book observations are fabricated by someone else who
> > the
> > > analyst typically does not know -- and does not communicate
> > with.
> >
> > Are you saying qualitative evidence is superior to quantitative? I
> > don't think so, but you don't seem to have anything good to say
> > about
> > quantitative empirical methods whatsoever.
> >
> > /srl
> >
> > -- 
> > Dr. Sven R Larson
> > Department of Economics
> > Skidmore College
> > 815, North Broadway
> > Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
> > (518) 580-5278

Paul Davidson

Editor, JOURNAL OF POST KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS

Economics Department - University of Tennessee

503 SMC

Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0550

work phone: (865) 974-4221

fax: (865) 974-4601/  (865) 974-1686

home phone and fax (865) 692-0802

http://econ.bus.utk.edu/davidsonextra/Davidson.html