[escepticos] Más sobre críticas a la teoría económica neoclásica

[Pedro J. Hdez]

Estaba echando un vistazo a este libro en Amazon Debunking Economics:
The Naked Emperor Dethroned? http://goo.gl/aQj8p y me he encontrado
esta excelente reseña de un economista http://goo.gl/Vrj9m de la que
señalo un párrafo especialmente interesante para los debates que ha
habido por aquí. Lo considero interesante porque creo que estamos
extrapolando injustificadamente desde lo que se dice y hace en ciertas
políticas económicas hasta la propia disciplina. ¿No será la política
económica a la que nos están sometiendo los incompetentes de turno
simplemente el análogo de las propuestas de política energética de
Greenpeace que no tienen en realidad ningún respaldo en las
publicaciones peer-reviewed de la disciplina? El hecho de que haya
muchos economistas que se apunten tampoco debería sorprendernos tanto.
 Al fin y al cabo hay muchos investigadores que colaboran y defienden
tesis de Greenpeace e incluso llegan al extremo de hasta manipular
notas de prensa en defensa de sus tesis, como le sucedió al mismo
IPCC.


Second Problem: Keen seriously undervalues the practical contribution
of traditional economics to economic policy and social planning, and
hence to helping countries adopt efficient and growth-oriented
economic systems. My ideal in practical economic theory is what is
dealt out weekly in The Economist, and I recommend the magazine highly
for both individuals and professionals. Keen stresses that
neoclassical economics cannot "predict the future," and concludes that
the theory is worthless. I believe economics could do a better job of
predicting if it employed large-scale agent-based modeling techniques,
and I am dismayed that a larger number of financial economists did not
predict the current financial crisis (some did, and The Economist
nagged about the housing bubble for years before it burst--I sold two
houses for family members about at the top of the market on the basis
of this advice), but the fact is that "heterodox" financial theories
always predict crisis, so they're right once in a while. That does not
make them superior theories.

Simply stated, explanation rather than prediction is often the mark of
a good theory. If you understand navigation, when the wind shifts you
will be able to adjust your sails accordingly; you don't have to be
able to predict when the wind will shift or by how much. My auto
mechanic and my plumber do not often predict when my car will break
down or when a pipe will leak in my house, yet they are capable of
diagnosing and fixing problems when they arise.

Traditional economic theory has much to contribute in many areas of
economic policy, despite Keen's categorical denial of this fact. Keen
depicts all economists as market-fundamentalist who believe the market
system is perfect and intervention will always make things worse off.
This is not true of most economists (indeed, the free market
fundamentalists rarely have any economic training at all, and base
their beliefs on quasi-religious faith), and those economists for whom
the epithet is apt are certainly not drawing on economic theory for
support. Traditional economic theory has stressed since the 1950's the
ubiquity of market failures and the fruitful role of state
intervention in correcting such failures (provided there are not
"state failures" that lead to worse outcomes from inept regulation
than the original problems the regulation was meant to solve).

The policies of the IMF, for instance, are not dictated by economic
theory, and highly prominent economists (including Nobel Prize winner
Joseph Stiglitz) have been vitriolic in criticizing the IMF's policies
on the basis of sound economic theory. Similarly, Alan Greenspan might
have falsely believed that financial markets are self-correcting, but
he did not get this idea from neoclassical economic theory, which has
no dynamical theory of price movements in at all in multi-market
systems (the reader might suggest that the Efficient Markets
Hypothesis in financial economics is such a theory, but in fact, this
hypothesis is based empirical observations and is not derived from
microeconomic theory based on a general model of market interaction).

saludos

-- 
Pedro J. Hernández
http://ecos.blogalia.com
@ecosdelfuturo