Today’s macroeconomics courses are built around Solow and Romerstyle growth theories, and micro-founded equilibrium macro models of the ‘real business cycle’ variety. Hewing to a course description with such an intellectual structure is a derogation of my personal and...

Much of federal government policy-making and -implementing is economic in matter and repercussion. But most policy decisions are made ultimately by non-economists. There are many economists in government, some of them seasoned government careerists and some on leave from universities. But what...

Coelho, De Worken-Eley and McClure (2005) showed that, 1963 through 2004, critical commentary declined significantly in the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics. Using the same method,...

In this essay reprinted from Social Forces 1926, Glenn E. Hoover laments the state of economic science. He suggests that because important political-economy decisions do not naturally fall to individuals with better knowledge and stronger motivation to make the decisions right, but rather are...

The writer observes that the fundamental economic principles taught in our higher education classrooms have not found their way into our colleges’ administration suites. Administrators rely on enrollment and tuition increases to balance their budgets. Although there are some...

Over the past four decades, top economics journals have virtually eliminated critical commentary (comments, replies, rejoinders, and the like). This article shows the data and discusses these steep declines in critical commentary. To the extent that critical commentary is beneficial to...

This article is a critical review of the picture drawn by Arild Sæther and Ib Eriksen (2014) of the economic policy and development of postwar Norway and of the influence exerted by Ragnar Frisch. Regarding the postwar economy the present article draws on a number of comprehensive studies by...

In the story of Norwegian economics, and of Norwegian economic policy and performance during the postwar years, a central place must be given to Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973). In 1969 he was awarded the first Nobel Prize in economics, together with Jan Tinbergen (1903–1994). In our view, the...

Professor Olav Bjerkholt has provided a spirited critique of our 2014 article titled “Ragnar Frisch and the Postwar Norwegian Economy.” Here we reply briefly, noting that many of the quotations he provides actually support our interpretation, that it is naïve of him to play the ideology...

Moral narratives have a substantive effect on the research conclusions of economists. This is one of the findings from a recent survey of economists that we conducted, which found a relationship between views on empirical economic propositions and moral judgments. This finding may help to answer...