The models are useless.
That’s the short version of a forword from the Bank of England’s Andrew Haldane to a report that questions everything about how modern economics are taught.
Haldane, who will become chief economist at the BOE on June 1, attacks the math-driven power structure in modern economics. He goes all the way back to Adam Smith and says the limitless research built on the idea that people are rational and act in their self interest is plain wrong.
“It is time to rethink some of the basic building blocks of economics,” he writes. “We are a co-operative species every bit as much as a competitive one. This is hardly a surprising conclusion for sociologists and anthropologists. But for economists it turns the world on its head.”
Andrew Haldane
The whole forword reminds me of Tom Cruise and his mission statement in Jerry McGuire. Hopefully, new thinkers like Haldane aren’t on the outside looking in.
