Heterodox Economics

patriks

I guess the prefix of "heterodox" has become more of an epithet of late, but at a time when - at least some - groups are looking at potential areas of economic reform, does anybody reckon any less accepted/less discussed approaches of the field should be taken in from the cold?

Time Magazine

I am biased, but I think rigorous behaviourally-influenced econometrics is the way of the future. I still think the crazy socialists (etc.) are crazy.

Flamed Diving

I have an amateur interest in evolutionary biology, and I have always seen parallels between certain phenomena of group behaviour (be it aggregate or individual) and it. I don't know anything about evolutionary economics, apart from its association with Schumpeters "creative destruction" thesis, which I also have time for.

Evolutionary economics does not take the characteristics of either the objects of choice or of the decision-maker as fixed. Rather its focus is on the non-equilibrium processes that transform the economy from within and their implications. The processes in turn emerge from actions of diverse agents with bounded rationality who may learn from experience and interactions and whose differences contribute to the change. The subject draws on the evolutionary methodology of Charles Darwin and the non-equilibrium economics principle of circular and cumulative causation. It is naturalistic in purging earlier notions of economic change as teleogical or necessarily improving the human condition.

(...)

In Schumpeter's book he proposed an idea radical for its time: The evolutionary perspective. He based his theory on the assumption of usual macroeconomic equilibrium, which is something like "the normal mode of economic affairs". This equilibrium is being perpetually destroyed by entrepreneurs who try to introduce innovations. A successful introduction of an innovation disturbs the normal flow of economic life, because it forces some of the already existing technologies and means of production to lose their positions within the economy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_economics

Time Magazine

Evolutionary economics is an interesting one alright. In general it makes two assumptions: incentive compatibility and "more likely to reproduce", the latter of which is sort of like a budget constraint.

Personally I think it's particularly interesting that such an approach seems reasonable from a biological level but is abhorred at the political level.

You may like this book, check if it's in your library.

Nothing heterodox about evolutionary game theory, though.

Flamed Diving

Time Magazine wrote: »

Evolutionary economics is an interesting one alright. In general it makes two assumptions: incentive compatibility and "more likely to reproduce", the latter of which is sort of like a budget constraint.

Personally I think it's particularly interesting that such an approach seems reasonable from a biological level but is abhorred at the political level.

You may like this book, check if it's in your library.

Nothing heterodox about evolutionary game theory, though.

I will give it look, thanks. I reckon it should have a lot to offer to Economics, I mean many of the incentives and outcomes that exist in the natural world, exist in our world, as well.

But I don't know that much about it, for now. It just seems like it should work.

Time Magazine

Flamed Diving wrote: »

It just seems like it should work.

Just like RBCs! :pac:

Anonymous1987

Time Magazine wrote: »

I am biased, but I think rigorous behaviourally-influenced econometrics is the way of the future. I still think the crazy socialists (etc.) are crazy.

I agree. Like the point I was making in the other thread, I think that both psychology and economics could benefit from some interdisciplinary studies.

Flamed Diving

Time Magazine wrote: »

Just like RBCs! :pac:

Kahneman and Tversky got the Nobel (well, Kaheman did) for their work in the 70s.
Both were pyschologists. Such work has been going on for many a year, as has work where economists and biologists, economists and network theorists, economists and some crazy non lineary mathematicians etc.

Take a look at the work of Oswald for example.