Thursday, July 12, 2007

We are caricatured at the NY Times

Several readers have asked me about this article in the NY Times. It begins as follows:
In Economics Departments, a Growing Will to Debate Fundamental Assumptions

For many economists, questioning free-market orthodoxy is akin to expressing a belief in intelligent design at a Darwin convention: Those who doubt the naturally beneficial workings of the market are considered either deluded or crazy.
Many economists in the past have questioned "free-market orthodoxy"--for example, Samuelson, Tobin, Modigliani, Solow, Sen, Stiglitz, Akerlof, Phelps,.... Does the economics profession consider these guys "deluded or crazy?" No, we give them Nobel Prizes!

Maybe it's because I have spent my education and career at Princeton, MIT, and Harvard, rather than Chicago, but I have never viewed the economics profession as being dominated by free-market orthodoxy.