#tbt Ben Fine and Anwar Shaikh at the 2015 NSER Journal Launch

"Heterodox Economists Don't Do Math" Reader

Anwar Shaikh - All the Humbug Papers. Literally all of them.

Herbert Simon - A Formal Theory of the Employment Relation

Thomas Herndon et al. - Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff

Duncan Foley and Deepankar Basu - Dynamics of Output and Employment in the U.S. Economy

Jesus de Felipe and John McCombie - The CES Production Function, the Accounting Identity, and Occam's Razor

Mathiness

This post I wrote for the New School Economic Review blog seems relevant again in light of Paul Romer's paper on "mathiness." It's a shame when heterodox economists get raked over the coals for criticizing the bad math of mainstream economics. Here's what I wrote back in December:

In the mainstream of economics, we find instead a core of ideologues – high priests interested in indoctrinating their students with a mathematical metaphysics out of accord with actual evidence. These reactionaries latch onto any theory which fits their dogmatic canon and runs on the presumption that markets and privatization are good. Since the 1960’s up until the present the discipline has shifted not only rightward, but inward. Those who object to the theoretical underpinnings of economics by demonstrating them to be inconsistent, misguided, or circular are pushed to the margins of the profession and met with a wall of silence. So, who is really protesting against mathematical formalism?

Read the rest at the New School Economic Review