Monday, July 05, 2010

True About Education Reform, Too

Digby:

And what's most amazing is that it has almost nothing to do with the arcane subject of macroeconomics at all. It has to do with the notion that a bunch of politicians and economists are making important decisions based upon what they perceive to be human behavior. I'm not sure that most of the people who are doing that have a clue about human behavior. (There are some economists, like Robert Frank, who study that aspect of the field, but I don't get the sense that they are being consulted.)

It's certainly possible that many of these elites believe they have special knowledge of the world of markets and can, therefore, predict how bond traders will react to certain situations, which seems to be of the utmost concern. However, their predictions have been miserably off the mark on that so far and there's little reason to have confidence that their rather simple-minded view of what motivates people has any validity at this point.

No comments: