Macroeconomics: en route

The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) hosted its inaugural conference this weekend at King’s College Cambridge, an experiment of sorts. I had the pleasure of attending the conference, my first time to Cambridge. John Maynard Keynes wrote his *General Theory* at King’s College. And as if that wasn’t enough, I dined with blogging legends, Mark Thoma and Yves Smith! The photo was taken at the conference by another attendee, Pierpaolo Barbieri: “Lord Skideslky, easily Keynes’ finest biographer”.

The conference was a spectacular fireworks display of economic panels, featuring experts across a broad spectrum of applied macroeconomic theory and policy, including banking and development. (You can see the speaker list, presentations, and video here). Definitely read other conference pieces by Marshall Auerback, Mark Thoma, and Yves Smith.

Through INET, George Soros is funding a vision: that new and innovative macroeconomic theory prevent, rather than fuel, future “Superbubbles”. INET’s goal is the following:

“to create an environment nourished by open discourse and critical thinking where the next generation of scholars has the support to go beyond our prevailing economic paradigms and advance our understanding of the economic system as a tool to meet social objectives.”

That’s a tall order, and likely not the intended output from the inaugural conference. But what Rob Johnson, Executive Director of INET, probably did have in mind was something of a declaration of war against outdated, disproved, or even deleterious macroeconomic policy and research. And there, I believe that he succeeded.

There was no shortage of criticism at the INET conference.

  • Joseph Stiglitz reiterated the sharp divergence between representative agent models and reality.
  • James Galbraith went the even more aggressive route by suggesting that REH (rational expectations hypothesis), EMH (efficient markets hypothesis), RAM (representative agent models), and DSGE (dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models) be buried beneath a bed of garlic below Keynes’ quarters with guards standing atop the burial site. (This was not a direct quote but very close.)
  • Simon Johnson pressed the need for more action to relieve the systemic pressures coming from the still top-heavy US banking system.
  • Dominique Strauss-Kahn charged global policymakers of being complacent with monetary and fiscal policy over the last decade. They were lured in by ostensibly stable growth, when in fact the financial foundation was crumbling below (after, of course, he was disrupted by a globalization protest with the catch phrase “the IMF is the Problem not the solution”).

In my view, the fact that economists were in some sense accepting blame for policy ignorance is a step in the right direction. So what’s the next step? What will it take to move macroeconomic theory and policy in a truly innovative and novel direction? I don’t know; but I do see two issues that will likely drag the process.

Problem #1: the financial crisis has rendered much empirical and theoretical research obsolete; clearly, this is a solid chunk of what I refer to as the “aggregate Curriculum Vitae”. There’s a host of refereed and published literature with now documented spurious results, or entire literature reviews citing papers with theses that tread water at best.

It’s going to take time to break through the concrete wall of neo-classical macroeconomic denial (among other types of denials). This is the “old boys club”, where careers and prestige are on the line. It’s the true sense of economics as a falsifiable science: some disproved and obsolete macro theory remains ingrained in the profession as some academics, some policymakers, and some politicians cling to their reputations. This “enables” bad economic policy.

The good thing, though, is with funding and support from Institutes like INET, this enabling behavior cannot last forever. The aggregate may enable the profession now; but if the foundation starts to crack, i.e., the next wave of graduate students and new tenure track researchers break the mold, the profession will rebuild. I hope.

Problem #2. Talented researchers, early in their tenure careers or currently registered in Ph.D. programs, need incentives and professional support to publish alternative views in top journals. It’s so easy to be shunned from the academic community; just take on an unorthodox research agenda, and bang, you’re bright and shiny career may be over before you know it. So what’s the incentive to rock the boat before establishing tenure? If tenure, by definition, is conditional on top-journal peer-refereed publications?

The new thinking must come from within the Ph.D programs. Building a base of new and sometimes controversial macroeconomic research that is accepted within the top academic community requires funding, but more importantly, a shift in the construct of the labor force. Macro Ph.D. programs across the world need restructuring and innovative teaching that includes an even stronger collaboration between student and adviser than existed before.

They say that lightning never strikes twice. Let’s hope that the economics profession avoids the second strike…this time around.

Rebecca Wilder