Mittwoch, 4. März 2009

Makroökonomie in der Krise und Theorie und Praxis

Weissgarnix sagt über Buiters Abrechnung mit der Mainstreammakro - sei des der Frischwasser- und der Salzwasservarianten folgendes:
Ich finde es ja immer wieder herzerfrischend, wenn die Gurus vom Glauben abfallen; insbesondere in dieser Micky-Maus-Disziplin namens “Mainstream-Ökonomie”. Aber was Willem Buiter da in seinem letzten Beitrag unter dem Titel “Die unglückseelige Nutzlosigkeit des Großteils der State-of-the-art monetären Makroökonomie” vom Stapel lässt, macht mich dann doch etwas baff: ziemlich offensichtlich ist da einer mächtig unzufrieden, den aktuellen Stand der Kunst betreffend; und verteilt deshalb gleich im allerersten Absatz reihum Ohrfeigen an Nobelpreisträger:

“Most mainstream macroeconomic theoretical innovations since the 1970s (the New Classical rational expectations revolution associated with such names as Robert E. Lucas Jr., Edward Prescott, Thomas Sargent, Robert Barro etc, and the New Keynesian theorizing of Michael Woodford and many others) have turned out to be self-referential, inward-looking distractions at best. Research tended to be motivated by the internal logic, intellectual sunk capital and esthetic puzzles of established research programmes rather than by a powerful desire to understand how the economy works - let alone how the economy works during times of stress and financial instability. So the economics profession was caught unprepared when the crisis struck.”

Holla - na, das klingt aber wirklich ziemlich “pissed”.

Justin Wolfers auf Freakonomics stimmt im Grossen und Ganzen zu:
Today’s macroeconomists write for other macroeconomists. If you aren’t using the right tools, you aren’t part of the club. And so yesterday’s approach becomes tomorrow’s approach. Echoing Yogi Berra’s famous dictate, each time macroeconomists came to a fork in the road, we took it. It doesn’t take a radical to suggest that perhaps trying the road less traveled might have led somewhere more interesting.
Despite this observation, I don’t share the gloom of the naysayers, but my optimism comes from looking beyond macro.

Krugman nennt es "Equilibrium decadence". Und via Marc Thoma die Antwort von Brad DeLong:
Yes, it is true. That is all.
Well, actually, that is not all. Buiter is a little bit too mean to us "new Keynesians", who were trying to solve the problem of why it is that markets seem to work very well as social planning, incentivizing, and coordination mechanisms across a range of activities and yet appear to do relatively badly in the things we put under the label of "business cycle." I, at least, always regarded Shiller, Akerlof, and Stiglitz as being fellow "New Keynesians." As Larry Summers put it to a bunch of us graduate students l around the end of 1983, Milton Friedman's prediction in 1966 that the post-WWII economic policy order would break down in inflation had come true and that that had given the Chicago School an enormous boost, but that now they had gone too far and were vulnerable, and that our collective intellectual task if we wanted to add to knowledge, do good for the world, and have productive and prominent academic careers was to "math up the General Theory": to take the conclusions reached by John Maynard Keynes in his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, and explain how or demonstrate to what degree they survived the genuine insights into expectations formation and asset pricing that the Chicago School had produced. In fact, Buiter's column I read as a commentary on General Theory chapter 12: "The State of Long-Term Expectation." Collectively, I think we made a compelling intellectual case--but we were completely ignored and dismissed by Chicago.
But, yes, on the big things Buiter is right.

Siehe dazu auch den Dahlem Report "The Financial Crisis and the Systemic Failure of Academic Economics" von David Colander, Hans Föllmer, Armin Haas, Michael Goldberg, Katarina Juselius, Alan Kirman und Thomas Lux.

Also eine neue Krise in der Makroökonomie dämmert heran - die wie vielte denn überhaupt? Alle Krisen der Ökonomie waren immer Krisen in der Makroökonomie. Die Mikro ist davon etwas weniger beeindruckt und die Süsswaserökonmen werden sich von Physikern, Statistikern und heterodoxen Ökonomen nicht viel sagen lassen. Paradoxerweise ist das IS-LM Modell des Herrn Hicks und seine Textbuchweiterentwicklungen immer noch zur Politikanalyse verwendbar - in der kurzen Frist - während die realen Konjunkturmodelle von ihren Annahmen her sich schwer tun die gegenwärtige Situation zu erklären. Die Finanzkrise ist ein Technologieschock - das kann ich noch nachvollziehen - allerdings ein - für Ökonomen - zutiefst endogener.

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