Re: Article in the Chronicle of Higher Education

["J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

      Just two comments:
1)  Not everything in JET or J. Math Econ is
"neoclassical garbage," although certainly a
majority of it is.  Just to give some simple
examples, although Paul D. dismisses Marxian
models as just a special case of a special case
of ergodic classical theory, JET has published
folks like Duncan Foley on Marxian labor theory
of value from time to time.
       It is also not true that everything that appears
in those journals, or many of the more high-powered
econometrics journals, assumes ergodicity or
stationarity.  There are plenty of empirical papers
that test for stationarity and fail to find it.
2)  As regards the issue of noise traders theory
and financial econ, Paul and I have beaten this
particular issue to death, and have well publicized
disagreements on this matter.   I would suggest
that anyone interested in seeing our respective
positions stated and dissected ad nauseum,
there are plenty of exchanges in the archives of
this list where they lurk and linger.
      But, I would conclude that non-ergodicity is
not the only thing (or even necessarily the main)
thing wrong with neoclassical economics.  I agree
that it is a problem, although Paul and I have
different views about what can lead to it.
Barkley Rosser
----- Original Message -----
From: "pdavidso" <pdavidso@xxxxxxx>
To: "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>
Cc: <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 3:38 PM
Subject: RE: Article in the Chronicle of Higher Education


> >===== Original Message From "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>
=====
> >      I agree with Paul Davidson regarding the
> >use of math and rigor.  Arguing against math
> >and rigor, per se, just leads to heterodox
> >economics being marginalized and disregarded.
>
> Not quite what I said Barkley. I said that the heterodox attack on math
and
> rigor makes it easy to marginalize and disregard serious heterodox
thinkers!
>
> >      I also agree that Roy Weintraub's book is
> >very interesting, although I have some disagreements
> >with him (but those will be aired in the JPKE
> >Symposium to which Paul referred).
>
> With a rejoinder from Roy Weintraub.
>
> >      I would note that although math and rigor must
> >be accepted, there is a trend to having less of it
> >in the mainstream now to a small extent.  Even in
> >places like JET or J. Math Econ one now sees
> >long verbal introductions that attempt to explain
> >in words what is supposedly going on in the paper.
>
> All that means it takes more printed pages to reach the same neoclassical
> garbage conclusion!
>
>
> >      However, I disagree with Paul regarding
> >pluralism.  That must be the appropriate response.
>
> Let me be clear what I am suggesting regarding pluralism.  What I am
> suggesting is that there is a funamental basic general theory (genbneral
since
> it rtequires less fundamental axiomatic building blocks than any other
theory
> of an entrepreneurial economy.  Then we can build "special cases" of this
> general theory by adding additional axioms on top of the fundemental ones.
[So
> classical economics is a "special case" of the Keynes's G.T]
>
> Explicitly specifying the additional axioms  underlying one's theory
permits
> pluralism -- but it also permits the fair-minded reader to see why the
> different theories differ due to which additional assumptions are built
into
> each different (plualistic) theory.
>
> Thus, for example, Marxian economics becomes a special case of the special
> case classical theory---where axioms about power (instead of competition)
are
> added to the classical ergodic assumption and the long-run neutrality of
money
> axiom.
>
> And Austrian economics as well as bounded rationality and game theory [and
I
> could add multiple equilibrium macroeconomic theory, and the Summers
> -DeLong-Stiglitz-Tobin theory of financial markets], despite their
emphasis on
> the decision maker making decisions either under
[epistomological]uncertainty
> or in the case of noise traders ignorance about the underlying ergodic
> stochastic process], are all pluralistic special cases of classical theory
> that, in turn. is a special case of the general theory.
>
> And the classical special case, as Keynes points out in the first page of
the
> GT, possesses additional postulates [axioms] that are applicable only to
the
> special case and "the characteristics of the [classical] special
case...happen
> not to be thoseof the economic society in which we live, with the result
that
> its teaching is misleading and disasterous if we attempt to apply it to
the
> facts of experience."
>
> paul
>
> Paul Davidson
> Editor, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics
> University of Tennessee
> SMC 503
> Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0550
> phone # (561)369-1951; fax #(561)369-1951;
> email pdavidson@xxxxxxx
> http://econ.bus.utk.edu/davidsonextra/Davidson.html
>
>