Décès de Paul Samuelson

[José]

Paul Samuelson, Prix Nobel d'économie, vient de mourir.

On ne dira jamais assez tout le mal qu'il a fait à la théorie économique non seulement en recyclant le keynésiannisme mais également en la mathématisant à outrance et de manière fétichiste au point de lui faire perdre tout contact avec la réalité. Par exemple, dans la treizième édition de son plus fameux opus, Economics, il sera capable d'écrire en 1989 (!) :

L'économie soviétique est une preuve que, contrairement à ce que beaucoup de sceptiques pensent, une économie socialiste peut fonctionner et même prospérer. C'est-à-dire qu'une société dans laquelle la majorité des décisions économiques sont adoptées de manière administrative, où les bénéfices ne sont pas le motif principal de la production, peut croître durant de longues périodes de temps.

Il a eu comme élèves des types comme Bernanke ou Krugman.

(Un autre article Wikiberal à pondre. )

[Sous-Commandant Marco]

Paul Samuelson, Prix Nobel d'économie, vient de mourir.

On ne dira jamais assez tout le mal qu'il a fait à la théorie économique non seulement en recyclant le keynésiannisme mais également en la mathématisant à outrance et de manière fétichiste au point de lui faire perdre tout contact avec la réalité. Par exemple, dans la treizième édition de son plus fameux opus, Economics, il sera capable d'écrire en 1989 (!) :

Il a eu comme élèves des types comme Bernanke ou Krugman.

(Un autre article Wikiberal à pondre. )

Ben quoi, il avait raison. Cette sympathique maxime s'applique encore aujourd'hui à la France ou aux Etats-Unis. Le problème de l'économie socialiste, ce n'est pas l'absence de croissance, c'est l'effondrement brutal.

EDIT: avait

[José]

Bien sûr, les Autrichiens furent et restent durement critiques :

Samuelson concluded the preface to his new edition by asserting, in his typically breezy style: "My envy goes out to the reader, setting out to explore the exciting world of economics for the first time. . . may I only say, bon appetit!" (p. xii). In contrast, my heart goes out to the poor bewildered undergraduate, confronted with this gigantic stew, ranging from opinionated wisecracks to the Giffen Paradox to marginal productivity analysis to Harrod-Domar-Modigliani growth models to notes on economists past and present to the latest ultrasophistication in reswitching analysis. What in the world can he make of all this? It is no wonder that economics is almost universally the most disliked subject in the college curriculum. The undergraduate is presented with no clear and coherent picture, no cogent guidelines on what economics is all about. Instead, beginning by knowing next to nothing about the field, he can only hold on, memorize like mad, and pray for the course to be over and his six credits achieved. Not that the other major texts are much better; Samuelson's Economics differs from its rivals largely in being bigger, more indigestible, and filled with the flip and unsupported wisecracks with which Samuelson is wont to dismiss deviant economic views.

http://mises.org/story/1542

The problem for Samuelson’s theoretical contributions is that one cannot easily point to any way in which economics is better rather than just different because of them. But even the differences are in a self-referential world. It is not as if because of his contributions we put a man on the moon or cured venereal disease.

What he did accomplish was a kind of methodological exclusivism. Economists more and more looked down on the “literary economists” who came before them. An idea plainly in Adam Smith became a “new idea” because someone was able to oversimplify it and put in mathematics. Economists overestimated their contributions to knowledge because they confused knowledge about the world with refinements in theory. The fact that Keynes and Hayek became so relevant (once again) to current events and policy made clear, I believe, that refinements of theory were of limited value in understanding the world. (…)

So, all in all, Paul Samuelson’s influence on economics was something I could have lived very well indeed without.

http://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/2009/12/…selection-bias/

[The] battle is the one between Samuelson and Mises, and the fateful choice was the late 1940s. Rather than following Mises's Human Action, the economics profession went the path of Samuelson's Foundations. Formalism was intereprted as synonymous with logical rigor, and in the subsequent decade positivistic testing was interpreting as synonymous with empirical analysis. By the 1960s, formalism and positivism transformed the science of economics so that the Misesian understanding of "theory" and "history" was actually completely dismissed as a relic of a pre-scientific age. (…)

I have stated on more than one ocassion that I believe Samuelson will be remembered in the same way as Sir William Petty is remembered, not as Adam Smith is remembered. His substantive contributions (as oppopsed to form in which he stated arguments) are not immediately obvious to pinpoint. We must always remember that Samuelson was the great anti-Misesian of 20th century economics, and in my book that translates into a force for anti-economics despite all the scientific accolades, awards, honorary degrees, and reverence by his peers he was granted in his lifetime.

http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/webl…-samuelson.html

[Lexington]

Paul Samuelson, Prix Nobel d'économie, vient de mourir.

On ne dira jamais assez tout le mal qu'il a fait à la théorie économique non seulement en recyclant le keynésiannisme mais également en la mathématisant à outrance et de manière fétichiste au point de lui faire perdre tout contact avec la réalité. Par exemple, dans la treizième édition de son plus fameux opus, Economics, il sera capable d'écrire en 1989 (!) :

Il a eu comme élèves des types comme Bernanke ou Krugman.

(Un autre article Wikiberal à pondre. )

Fait