Why I hate mathematics and econometric economics?

As I posted here today about my dislike of mathematics and econometric economics some reader may think I am wrong and hey what hell you are talking about; each subject has its own course of relevant. Some specialize this or that. Some also confuses both by injecting a serious of models which can be understood by a few people etc. by creating a journal for that few people! 

Paul Krugman won the 2008 The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. My base for hating the mathematics and econometric economics is from his article published at MIT. Whether one like or dislike economics as a subject his article is worth to read. 

Some excerpts: 

"Marshallian" style of economic discourse: "(1) Use mathematics as a shorthand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life. (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can't succeed in 4, burn 3."

"Economic doctrine ... is not a body of concrete truth, but an engine for the discovery of concrete truth ..." (quoted in Sills and Merton, p. 150).

How are students and colleagues supposed to learn how to use this engine if you burn the evidence of the engine at work?

Krugman’s version of Marshall's rules:

“(1) Figure out what you think about an issue, working back and forth among verbal intuition, evidence, and as much math as you need. (2) Stay with it till you are done. (3) Publish the intuition, the math, and the evidence - all three - in an economics journal. (4) But also try to find a way of expressing the idea without the formal apparatus. (5) If you can, publish that where it can do the world some good.

In short, two cheers for formalism - but reserve the third for sophisticated informality”.

“the point of their education is to learn methods, not answers. And publication in professional journals is or at least should be a form of education: it is how economists teach each other about their work.” 

In fact liberal economist F A Hayek who also received The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel jointly in 1974.   

Hayek said something like this: “economics is a method”.

Cheers some time end……with its own time

In the Forbes blog there is an important question which one need to ask when it come Tom and Krugman understanding of ‘supply side economic’. 

A Nobel Low: Krugman Calls Small Government Philosophies Racist

Cord Blomquist asks: 

• “How does Krugman attempt to do this?  First, he points to the G.O.P., as though Republicans are the vanguard of small government.  He claims that, “Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash.” 
  
• Mr. Krugman knows better and is hoping that smearing the philosophy of limited governement with accusations of racism will save him the work of presenting real, honest arguments against a very powerful set of ideas. 
  
• Those powerful ideas were developed by philosophers and economists like Adam Smith, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman—giants of the academy. 
  
• Hayek and Friedman especially must be known to Krugman.  Both were recipients of the same prize as Mr. Krugman, the Nobel Prize in Economics. 
  
• Both were also more reasoned in their opinions than Mr. Krugman. 
  
• Rather than dismissing ideas he disagrees with as racist, Mr. Krugman ought to get back to his academic roots and engage in a little constructive dialogue.  Perhaps that would prevent him from producing the the kind of thoughtless drivel he’s been allowed to publish in the New York Times”.
  

Courage in venturing outside economics

Erik S. Reinert writes “Professor Krugman and the ancient Mexicans have something in common. Both made epochal discoveries, only to keep them as toy models instead of putting them to practical use. In my book How Rich Countries Got Rich…and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor, I refer to two important vices of the economics profession: what Schumpeter calls the Ricardian Vice, that is, the habit of piling a heavy load of strong policy recommendations upon very shaky assumptions; and what I have dubbed the Krugmanian Vice, the production of theoretical models that explain the real world better than Ricardo did – but not applying them to actual economic policy. In the third world the two vices combine to create serious obstacles to development.”

Much of the author’s clime or understanding seems politics theories of blaming or criticizing the government and its policies.  

Hunting Free Trade

Paul Krugman says in Newsweek interview that the “World trade is already so free, we're really talking about stuff at the margins”.