“Macroeconomics after the Crisis: Time to Deal with the Pretense-of-Knowledge Syndrome” Free Download
MIT Department of Economics Working Paper No. 10-16
RICARDO J. CABALLERO, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – Department of Economics, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Email: caball@mit.edu
In this paper I argue that the current core of macroeconomics – by which I mainly mean the so-called dynamic stochastic general equilibrium approach – has become so mesmerized with its own internal logic that it has began to confuse the precision it has achieved about its own world with the precision that it has about the real one. This is dangerous for both methodological and policy reasons. On the methodology front, macroeconomic research has been in “fine-tuning” mode within the local-maximum of the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium world, when we should be in “broad-exploration” mode. We are too far from absolute truth to be so specialized and to make the kind of confident quantitative claims that often emerge from the core. On the policy front, this confused precision creates the illusion that a minor adjustment in the standard policy framework will prevent future crises, and by doing so it leaves us overly exposed to the new and unexpected.
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MIT, a hotbed for Austrian economics!
Don’t tell Chomsky. He might stage a sit in at the Econ Department.
Caballero is so close to the correct answer, then lurches suddenly to the left. I think the solution to the neoclassical growth model is simple: break up capital into at least capital goods and consumer goods production and model the changes in both caused by monetary policy.
The growth model is a long run model and is good for what it does. But business cycles are short-run events. The long-run models smooths over those events. Caballero merely needs to make the long run model a short run model by breaking up capital in it.
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