Valuable economics knowledge available, ironically, for free

post by Stuart_Armstrong · 2013-07-18T11:30:34.829Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 37 comments

Contents

37 comments

I took an economics course recently. And by "took a course" I mean followed a series of online lectures. I can strongly recommend doing so, especially if you already think you have an intuitive grasp of economics.

I was in that situation. I knew about incentives, and revealed preferences. I understood that supply and demand curves crossed. I grasped some of the monetarist arguments about the lack of long run tradeoffs between inflation and employment. I could talk about Keynesian stimulus and sticky prices/wages. I understood bank runs. Externalities were obvious, public goods a bit less so. I even knew quite a lot about banks and the money supply.

I had it pretty good, I thought. And yet when I followed basic economics lecture, I learnt a lot. The models and concepts suddenly fit together. I understood concepts that I only thought I had understood before. Economists do know their stuff, their models and concepts are informative - more so than I ever expected.

So, bearing in mind that economics is a social science whose conclusions are not nearly as rigorous as its models, I can recommend to anyone on Less Wrong who's interested to follow a lecture series or take a course.

The lecture series I followed was this one, by Professor Kenneth E. Train (the first lecture can be skipped). The most useful potential insight of all was in a brief throw-away comment in lecture 22: many economist think that the unemployment rate is determined entirely by macro-economic policy (and probably by the business cycle). So all the articles you might read about new industries "creating" jobs, or about some people becoming unemployable because of the "loss" of certain types of jobs: according to some some economists, all these articles are wrong. These trends affect who is employed versus unemployed, and conditions and wages, but not the unemployment rate across the business cycle. An interesting idea, worth thinking about.

Here are some brief notes on each lecture (useful for revision):

That's the end of micro-economics, the rest are about macro-economics:

And in conclusion:

37 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by Lumifer · 2013-07-18T15:22:10.219Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I would caution to be sceptical of undergrad-level economics, in particular macro. The usual models taught to students have huge problems dealing with the real world.

This is not to say that one should not study economics. However the state of this discipline is pretty bad right now (again, in particular concerning macro) and it's generally acknowledged that simple macro models are NOT how the world actually works.

Replies from: Stuart_Armstrong, benkuhn, kgalias, framsey
comment by Stuart_Armstrong · 2013-07-18T15:51:19.561Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Thanks for the warning! Do you have any references for this, btw, or is it just your own sentiment?

Replies from: Matt_Simpson, RomeoStevens, novalis
comment by Matt_Simpson · 2013-07-19T09:19:18.473Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

FWIW I'm a grad student in econ, and in my experience the undergrad and graduate macro are completely different. I recall Greg Mankiw sharing a similar sentiment on his blog at some point, but can't be bothered to look it up.

Replies from: framsey
comment by framsey · 2013-07-20T18:10:09.401Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I would say that undergrad and grad econ are very different methodologically (at least at most schools), but a lot of the content is the same.

Stephen Williamson's intermediate macro textbook tries to bring in a lot of grad-level models/concepts, albeit in a "toy" form.

Replies from: Matt_Simpson
comment by Matt_Simpson · 2013-07-20T20:29:12.542Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

What do you mean by 'content' here? The basic narrative each model tells about the economy?

I think I agree with you. The big difference between the models I learned in undergrad and the models I learned in grad school was that in undergrad, everything was static. In grad school, the models were dynamic - i.e. a sequence of equilibria over time instead of just one.

Replies from: framsey
comment by framsey · 2013-07-20T21:08:31.676Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

What do you mean by 'content' here? The basic narrative each model tells about the economy?

Right. Plus most undergrad models have an analog in grad macro, i.e. the AD-AS model and the New Keynesian model, or Quantity theory of money and a basic cash in advance model.

The big difference between the models I learned in undergrad and the models I learned in grad school was that in undergrad, everything was static. In grad school, the models were dynamic

True in general. Some intermediate macro courses use a two-period framework to explore basic dynamics. Williamson's textbook does this.

comment by RomeoStevens · 2013-07-19T06:28:04.740Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

If for no other reason, that macro has lots of political implications which winds up being mind killy. Micro OTOH, is instrumentally useful, in that people who understand it generally evade some common errors.

Replies from: Stuart_Armstrong, Yosarian2
comment by Stuart_Armstrong · 2013-07-19T07:52:02.663Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Micro has a lot of political implications as well (minimum wages, regulations, taxes, barriers to entry...)

comment by Yosarian2 · 2013-07-24T17:29:23.460Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

That there is a danger, though, that people who study micro but don't study macro will end up with a bias that will mislead them, especially in political terms. I know people who took microeconomics 101 and nothing else, and there is a danger there in that people who did that now think they now understand how the whole economy works, but actually don't.

Replies from: ChristianKl, RomeoStevens
comment by ChristianKl · 2013-07-26T09:41:41.318Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I think the danger of people thinking that they understand how the economy works rises with the amount of economic causes the person takes.

comment by RomeoStevens · 2013-07-24T22:24:09.329Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Are they any more wrong than people who study macro and think they understand how the whole economy works? Do these wrong beliefs cash out in actions that negatively impact them? The only thing macro impacts for most people is their conversations with other people about macro.

Replies from: Eugine_Nier
comment by Eugine_Nier · 2013-07-25T01:52:17.626Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Do these wrong beliefs cash out in actions that negatively impact them?

Not directly. But in a collective tragedy of the commons style way, wrong beliefs about macro ultimately lead to had economic policy which in tern ultimately does negatively impact everyone.

comment by benkuhn · 2013-07-18T19:51:27.694Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Are complex macro models how the world actually works? What are our most successful macro models, and how successful have they been? My impression (based off not that much data, admittedly) was that this applied to all macro, not just undergrad.

Replies from: Lumifer, framsey
comment by Lumifer · 2013-07-18T20:31:52.562Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

It is true that this warning applies to all macro, not just undergrad. But by the time you get to the grad level and beyond you already understand (or should understand) the limitations of the models and the difference between academia and real world. At undergrad level you're still likely to be seduced by the simple narratives that these models offer.

comment by framsey · 2013-07-20T23:26:27.488Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Are complex macro models how the world actually works?

Nope! All models are huge simplifications.

What are our most successful macro models, and how successful have they been?

A controversial question!

The conventional approach in (academic) macro is to build (relatively) simple models that can match particular stylized facts. Thus we have lots of models that can predict certain patterns in the data, but don't pretend to explain everything. Some people think we shouldn't do anything beyond this! (See Caballero, Pretense of Knowledge Syndrome)

Other people do try to build models that can match all the data. A standard cite is Christiano, Eichbenbaum and Evans (2005), and for another approach see Smets and Wouters (2007) (they even call themselves Bayesians!).

Then there are macro forecasters who try to accurately predict the future using non-theoretical statistical models. An example of this would be the work of Frank Diebold at Penn. These models can do a lot better than the above at predicting future data absent changes in the policy regime, but are presumably less effective at predicting the effects of novel policies (see the Lucas Critique).

My own opinion is that if you want to predict the next data point, use a forecasting model, but if you want to know the effects of a new policy, your best bet is to rely on simple models plus judgement. Good economists know more than any model!

Replies from: ChristianKl
comment by ChristianKl · 2013-07-26T09:40:15.844Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

My own opinion is that if you want to predict the next data point, use a forecasting model, but if you want to know the effects of a new policy, your best bet is to rely on simple models plus judgement.

How do you know?

comment by kgalias · 2013-07-19T14:09:25.778Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I would caution to be sceptical of undergrad-level economics, in particular macro.

This is my primary rationalization against learning some economics. How worried should I be?

Replies from: Lumifer
comment by Lumifer · 2013-07-19T19:03:49.842Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

You definitely should learn economics. While learning you should be sceptical of what you are being told -- more than usual in the case of macro models.

Just treat it as some shady characters spinning you a tale :-D Use your brains and make frequent checks against observable reality.

comment by framsey · 2013-07-20T18:15:16.779Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I would caution to be sceptical of undergrad-level economics, in particular macro. The usual models taught to students have huge problems dealing with the real world.

Name three.

Replies from: gwern
comment by gwern · 2013-07-20T19:45:20.423Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Contemporary Japan, and America; the Great Depression; business cycles in general.

(I threw in a fourth one for free because I love the 'name three' heuristic even if you chose a really bad topic to use it in.)

Replies from: framsey
comment by framsey · 2013-07-20T20:27:12.902Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Lumifer said (1) the state macroeconomics as a whole is bad, (2) what you learn in a principles course is not how the world actually works, and (3) macro models have huge problems dealing with the real world. These are extreme claims, and I think I was justified in calling him on them.

To your examples -- the AD-AS model (or IS-LM in older textbooks) can be used to think about business cycles in general, and the liquidity trap in particular, which covers most of your examples. The Great Depression needs discussion of monetary policy (gold standard, Friedman-Schwartz, etc), and all of your examples need some discussion of financial crises, banking panics, and asset bubbles. Japan is not that mysterious once you consider demographics and per-capita growth rates.

A good principles class will spend quite a bit of time talking about each of your examples, and show how to think about them using the standard tools.

Replies from: gwern
comment by gwern · 2013-07-20T20:50:47.029Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

These are extreme claims, and I think I was justified in calling him on them.

You demanded examples where macro does not work well in the real world. I named 4: Japan remains a mystery to macro, and 'Abenomics' hasn't helped eluicidate it; the US crash was unexpected and falsified the 'Great Moderation', casting doubt on the entire structure of macro that didn't predict it; the Great Depression is only partially understood even if a lot of people think Friedman cracked it; and business cycles remain mysterious with panics and bubbles being not explanations but excuses. The growing influence of the macro views of Scott Sumner, who was a marginal figure at best a few years ago, offers another practical bit of evidence that macro is far from a settled science when it comes to contemporary economies.

A good principles class will spend quite a bit of time talking about each of your examples, and show how to think about them using the standard tools.

I'm sure it would. Doesn't mean it is right or that macro has a consensus view on each such as how to fix and prevent and predict them.

Replies from: framsey
comment by framsey · 2013-07-20T23:28:18.524Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

You demanded examples where macro does not work well in the real world. I named 4

I demanded examples of models taught to undergrads that have "huge problems dealing with the real world." The same poster went on to say that these models are so dangerously wrong one must be intellectually inoculated against them!

You've given several examples where our knowledge is incomplete. I agree! And I hope that any economist would explicitly say that there's no settled explanation for the Great Depression, or the Great Recession, or Japan's Lost Decade. But that is quite different from saying that the models we DO teach have "huge problems dealing with the real world" and "are NOT how the world works". I think the basic models ARE effective tools for understanding how the world works, and a good teacher will explain both their uses and their limitations.

In brief, the fact that there are things we don't know does not mean that what we do know is wrong, and a good principles class should teach both what we know, and what we don't.

Replies from: gwern
comment by gwern · 2013-07-20T23:43:28.633Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

You've given several examples where our knowledge is incomplete. I agree! And I hope that any economist would explicitly say that there's no settled explanation for the Great Depression, or the Great Recession, or Japan's Lost Decade.

If the state of the art cutting edge economic research is that "there's no settled explanation" for Japan's Lost Decades (plural, since we're well into multiple decades, I think), then how on earth could the simple models taught to undergraduates not have "huge problems" dealing with these "real world" events?

Replies from: framsey
comment by framsey · 2013-07-21T00:13:19.193Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

If the state of the art...is that "there's no settled explanation" for Japan's Lost Decades...then how on earth could the simple models taught to undergraduates not have "huge problems" dealing with these "real world" events?

I don't see how this follows.

Suppose we teach a theory that says things in set X can be caused by things in set Y={A,B,C}. Then I say "there's substantial argument about whether major event x in X was caused by A or by B."

This does not mean the theory has "huge problems" dealing with real world events! It just lacks the power to distinguish between causes from within the set Y.

In the same way, economists argue about the causes of things like the Great Depression, Lost Decade, and Great Recession, but they mostly agree about the sort of causes they need to consider, and they have a common framework to think about them in (or at worst a few competing frameworks).

Replies from: gwern
comment by gwern · 2013-07-21T00:45:22.670Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

This does not mean the theory has "huge problems" dealing with real world events! It just lacks the power to distinguish between causes from within the set Y.

Then it's not a theory capable of explaining the event at all. If all you can do is throw together a variety of heterogenous contradictory theories, you haven't explained an event.

I'm reminded of Wittgenstein, now, on family resemblances - of course one could define "a game" as an indefinitely long disjunction of possibilities "a game is anything which is either Backgammon OR chess OR go OR Halo OR tossing a ball OR soccer..." but having giving this disjunction, in what sense has one actually conveyed what a game is? Same thing here.

In the same way, economists argue about the causes of things like the Great Depression, Lost Decade, and Great Recession, but they mostly agree about the sort of causes they need to consider, and they have a common framework to think about them in (or at worst a few competing frameworks).

I believe that however we explain the Lost Decades, it will involve materialism and not souls. Do I have a perfectly satisfactory theory capable of explaining the Lost Decades? No, of course not.

Replies from: framsey
comment by framsey · 2013-07-21T01:38:14.969Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Then it's not a theory capable of explaining the event at all.

Are you really claiming that a theory that restricts the possible causes of an event to three has not explained the event "at all"?

Under this definition, I agree that undergraduate macroeconomics cannot explain the real world. But surely this is a rather restrictive standard for "explanation"?

I would rather say that a theory that allows us to concentrate a lot of probability mass on Y upon observing an element in X, or to concentrate a lot of probability mass on X after observing an element in Y, is doing quite a bit of explanatory work!

Replies from: gwern
comment by gwern · 2013-07-21T01:42:57.324Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Are you really claiming that a theory that restricts the possible causes of an event to three has not explained the event "at all"?

This isn't a case of 1 theory which predict the cause as being 3 different possible causes. We're talking 3 entire competing paradigms, and then yeah, pretty much. "We think you're sick either because people get cancer, or they have 4 bodily humors which get imbalanced, or it's all due to malignant airs. We doctors haven't figured out which is the right paradigm, but rest assured as you die: probably one of the 3 paradigms is right!" I sure as heck wouldn't go around saying "medicine has it all figured out".

So. As I said originally: macro cannot agree on an explanation for any of the events I listed, and my examples fit your demand for examples.

Replies from: framsey
comment by framsey · 2013-07-21T02:14:58.199Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

We think you're sick either because people get cancer, or they have 4 bodily humors which get imbalanced, or it's all due to malignant airs. We doctors haven't figured out which is the right paradigm, but rest assured as you die: probably one of the 3 paradigms is right!

There isn't this much disagreement over macro. Especially undergrad macro.

As I said originally: macro cannot agree on an explanation for any of the events I listed, and my examples fit your demand for examples.

And I explained how one could use the models taught in macro principles to think about each example.

Replies from: gwern
comment by gwern · 2013-07-21T03:54:36.221Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

There isn't this much disagreement over macro. Especially undergrad macro.

The undergrad macro you've already described as so simplified that it doesn't apply to real world situations and ignores the controversy between feuding schools which bars any kind of consensus.

And I explained how one could use the models taught in macro principles to think about each example.

"With this undergrad course in the 4 humors, I hope that you will be able to use the basic principles of melancholy vs choleric etc to interpret the illnesses and personalities you see around you..."

Whatever. I'm done. I provided the relevant examples, you acknowledge that there is indeed no consensus about them, and that's all that was needed.

Replies from: Zaine
comment by Zaine · 2013-07-22T01:51:58.815Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Should one skip right to graduate level macroeconomics, then? Or are there companion resources one might want to consume concurrently with learning undergraduate level macro? A previous poster recommended learning undergrad with a healthy dose of scepticism; if that scepticism were applied to half-truths taught in undergrad macro, would the supposed activity of 'learning about economics' become an exercise in comparing maps to their charted territory?

Replies from: gwern
comment by gwern · 2013-07-22T03:30:53.454Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I am not sure that given the state of the art, macro is worth learning at all at any level for people who do not plan to go into academia specializing in macro.

comment by NoSignalNoNoise (AspiringRationalist) · 2013-07-18T12:18:49.726Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

This is a valuable post. I would take out the part of the title about contradicting itself, though. It's unnecessary and distracting.

Replies from: Stuart_Armstrong
comment by Stuart_Armstrong · 2013-07-18T13:20:38.880Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Adjusted the title a bit to keep the same meaning but reduce distraction.

comment by edanm · 2013-07-20T20:12:43.241Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

How does this lecture series compare with reading a good econ textbook (e.g. Greg Mankiw's "Principle of Economics")?

Replies from: Stuart_Armstrong
comment by Stuart_Armstrong · 2013-07-20T20:29:02.397Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

No idea! Haven't read a good econ textbook, probably don't have the learning style to get that much out of it.