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Divining Economic Issues
| Article
# : |
14239 |
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Section : |
EDITORIAL
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1988 |
1,273 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
The special report this month in Current Issues deals with the state of the American economy. I assume that most of our readers are as bemused as I am by the fact that any four different economists are likely to have at least five opinions on many immediately important economic issues. Although there are certain basic aspects of economics on which almost all economists are likely to agree, these rarely include subjects of serious public debate.
The reason for this is not hard to find. Let us consider a field that all would concede is a genuine science, physics. Now suppose that we have to agree on how to build a bridge or design a plane, that is, on a matter of applied physics. Engineers might well disagree. If they do, they might turn to wind tunnel experiments or computer exercises to determine how real-world factors that theoretical physics does not directly deal with will affect the project. That is true even for a simple multibody problem, which is not nearly as complex as the design of a bridge or plane.
However, we cannot put an economy in a wind tunnel, build small models of it, or represent it in a computer without making simplifying assumptions that may vitally affect the outcome. Moreover, the computer model necessarily will leave out of account either unnoticed changes in individual propensities to behave or changes in relevant affecting conditions. In short, anyone who operates from any specific and rigid set of assumptions--whether monetarist, supply-side, or Keynesian--without asking whether the assumptions are relevant to the particular case, is an ideologue. And even if one asks the relevant questions, there are indeterminacies at work that make speculation
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