The Chicago School v. The Rest of Us

There’s a very big debate between economists that’s beginning to spill on to the pages of major newspapers.  Suddenly, people that I usually only read in scholarly articles are attending conferences where they give papers in what passes off more as the lessons of theory and empirical evidence instead of the theory and evidence itself.   So many folks are coming down out of the ivory towers these days that I think some kind of tipping point about the financial crisis has been reached.  The only thing I can think that may have caused this escalation is the back and forth that is now the blogosphere and the financial crisis which is making a lot of folks defend their models.

Many, many academic economists keep blogs now.  The readership of these blogs was originally every one’s students or the adopters of your textbook.  It then became a way to pass your working papers and pubs back and forth to avoid the journals.  Even a few folks have actually put their databases up for use by doctorate students.  Believe me, both a blessing and a curse having been in the position of having to reproduce a bunch of stuff I’d rather have not.  Many finance folks keep blogs because they make money giving advice to Wall Street Types and investors.  But their blogs have taken an interesting twist too.   Maybe it’s because I live blocks from the Mississippi and a few miles from a salt water lake but watching this back and forth is like watching the world’s longest intellectual and philosophical tennis match.  Do we really have to repeat the Great Depression for the Chicago School to get it this time?

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