A Quote by Robert J. Shiller
Since the global financial crisis and recession of 2007-2009, criticism of the economics profession has intensified. The failure of all but a few professional economists to forecast the episode - the aftereffects of which still linger - has led many to question whether the economics profession contributes anything significant to society.
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Economics profession, they've been - they've been confident in various formulas, but economics is not physics. The same formula that works in one decade doesn't work in the next. Economics is a difficult subject.
It's a question of economics. If you're paid the same as a man, which now you are in this profession, you're equal.
For a variety of reasons, I have always felt myself an outsider. I don't know how to classify myself in economics. I am a loner. I do not like groupthink, which, if anything, has become more important in economics. In addition, a lot of the values I hold are not the mainstream values in the profession.
If people are teaching economics, they need to teach all the different disciplines, all the different schools in economics. They can't just teach one because then the person isn't equipped to deal with the economics profession.
The economics profession advances by one confusing financial disaster at a time.
The economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.
The stress on the financial system in the fall of 2007 was significant, but not so significant as to threaten the overall stability of the U.S. economy, although it did lead to the beginning of a recession at the end of 2007.
I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.
Women's battle for financial equality has barely been joined, much less won. Society still traditionally assigns to woman the role of money-handler rather than money-maker, and our assigned specialty is far more likely to be home economics than financial economics.
My clinical psychologist wife of 40 years has always had a close intellectual influence on me. When I was beginning to talk openly in the economics profession about irrationality in decision-making, I received a lot of criticism. Ginny would support my views and remind me that a whole other profession - psychology - studies people's irrational sides.
There is no question that the recovery from the global recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis has been unusually lengthy and anemic.
How should the best parts of psychology and economics interrelate in an enlightened economist's mind?... I think that these behavioral economics...or economists are probably the ones that are bending them in the correct direction. I don't think it's going to be that hard to bend economics a little to accommodate what's right in psychology.
No one knows anything about economics. It's the great lie of the economists. By contrast in football people might have contrasting opinions, each of which has some validity. But the economists always speak in conditionals - what a mess.
Many of us like to think of financial economics as a science, but complex events like the financial crisis suggest that this conceit may be more wishful thinking than reality.
Mathematical economics is old enough to be respectable, but not all economists respect it. It has powerful supporters and impressive testimonials, yet many capable economists deny that mathematics, except as a shorthand or expository device, can be applied to economic reasoning. There have even been rumors that mathematics is used in economics (and in other social sciences) either for the deliberate purpose of mystification or to confer dignity upon common places as French was once used in diplomatic communications.
Economists operate with this image of the homo economicus, the rational economic agent, and while such agents are rare in the wider world, they are common in economics departments. Exemplifying the homo economicus paradigm, economists typically choose their research projects and hypotheses so as to promote their own careers, to maximize their lifetime income. This explains the astonishing pressures toward conformity in academic economics: how deviant views (except those by a few who have already achieved stardom) get crushed by an army of conformists.
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