Comments on: A Conspiracy of Silence on The French Liberal School

By: cynical

cynical — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:44:40 +0000

I really don’t know what you guys are talking about… my professors and, thus, everyone else (media, etc.) STILL believe in econometrics, forecasting, and studies / papers that make absurd conclusions based on bogus models and mathematical equations.

By: Roger M

Roger M — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 07:18:19 +0000

Yeah, and the results of that confidence in econometrics and central planning was disastrous!

By: Matthew

Matthew — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 07:07:39 +0000

Daniel,

I don’t see what your point is. The flaws in econometric reasoning go back as far as the Davenant-King “Law” of the late 17th Century. So some academics in the 1950s saw future hopes for this branch of economic science and that made it acceptable to neglect the evidence of the preceding 250 years?

On a somewhat related note, there is a quite laughable article in the recent issue of the Economist on how we cannot live without mathematical models.

By: Daniel M. Ryan

Daniel M. Ryan — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 06:57:47 +0000

There's dream time and there's wake time, RogerM. Schumpeter's History was published in 1954, and at the time of publication, there were still high hopes for econometrics revolutionizing economics held by the best and the brightests in, at least, Harvard and MIT.

By: Paul Marks

Paul Marks — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 05:40:26 +0000

Mises was clearly right to distrust Schumpeter. “Great ones have flaws” – eveyone does indeed have flaws, but I do not think that Schumpeter was a great economist.

In modern times there has been a strong effort in France to draw attention to the Liberal (in the liberty sense of “liberal”) school.

I do not know how successful this effort has been.

By: Roger M

Roger M — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 04:36:39 +0000

Very informative article! Thanks! I skimmed Schumpeter’s history of economics and found several other things surpising. He seemed to think very highly of Marx as a theorist, and he placed a great deal of confidence in econometrics. In one of the last chapters, he seems to say that the use of econometrics will empower central planners to perform the work of a free market without the “failures.” Knowing something about econometrics myself, I found such statements arrogant and foolish. I guess all of the great ones have some flaws.