A praxeologia está a ganhar II

Should We Trust Economists?, NOAH SMITH

"But the best "experts" that we have -- academic economists -- are in generally ill repute. Surveys have shownthat the public has very little confidence in their predictions. They argue bitterly on op-ed pages and can't seem to agree on the most basic issues. (...)

The problem is that economists haven't really built a model of the whole economy that works. A lot of smart people have spent a lot of time creating tools with names like "dynamic stochastic general equilibrium." But as of this moment, those models can't really forecast the economy like our meteorologists can forecast the weather.(...)

Theory isn't the only problem. Economists don't really have good enough data to understand how the economy works, either. With chemistry or biology, you can put things in a lab and test them out with controlled experiments. With microeconomics -- the study of specific markets -- you can do something similar; for example, the auctions that Google uses to sell online ads were developed by microeconomists. But with macroeconomics -- the study of the economy as a whole -- you can't put countries and entire economies in a lab; all you can do is sit there and watch history go by, and try to deduce some patterns. But often enough, those patterns vanish just as soon as you think you've found one.(...)

Greg Mankiw, one of the world's most famous macroeconomists (and my PhD advisor's PhD advisor) put the sentiment this way in a 2011 New York Times column:

"After more than a quarter-century as a professional economist, I have a confession to make: There is a lot I don't know about the economy. Indeed, the area of economics where I have devoted most of my energy and attention -- the ups and downs of the business cycle -- is where I find myself most often confronting important questions without obvious answers..."

Mas ainda assim o autor não desarma:

"Finally, though mainstream economists may not have it all figured out, they are far better than most of the groups who lurk outside the mainstream. For example, spend an afternoon reading the ideas of so-called "Austrian" economists, who believe that we only need logic to understand how the economy works, and that data and evidence are useless. Absurd. But that's the kind of alternative that's out there, and some people really believe that stuff."

Como já tenho dito várias vezes, um empirista desiludido mais depressa conclui que não existe verdade do que adopta o método reflexivo que a ciilização conheceu desde os clássicos, passando pelos intelectuais da Igreja da Idade Média, mas que o espírito moderno dominado pelo mundo anglo-saxónico e protestante, procura esconder.