Thursday, March 15, 2012

Andrew Gelman weighs in

Mark Palko asked me to post a link to Andrew Gelman's really interesting discussion about "economics exceptionalism". 

My own take-away is that I had not thought about the intellectual dominance of Freudian thinking for a long time and I had never made the link to economics.  But there were occasional forays of economics into areas like education and public health that I have spent some time talking about.  By now we all know the idea behind Freakonomics (even if it might be largely a marketing ploy, it has some intelelctual cachet).   The issue with Ray Fisman and teacher retention policy (should we fire 80% of new teachers) has seen a lot of discussion on this blog and I consider it a classic example of this type of economics reasoning exported to a more general subject matter.  (which is not a dig at Ray Fisman who appears to be a brilliant thinker on his own turf). 

So go, read, and enjoy the comments

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