It’s become a cliché that this gen­er­a­tion of macro­econ­o­mists have with­drawn from the actu­al world and embed­ded them­selves in a cocoon. You can get a Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics for dream­ing up an equa­tion that does­n’t have to be test­ed against real events in actu­al economies. (How the physi­cists, who must wait patient­ly for con­fir­ma­tion from real­i­ty, must envy them.) Too much empha­sis on method­ol­o­gy, is the usu­al con­clu­sion. But Mark Thoma, in the Fis­cal Times has some­thing to say about that:

“There has been quite a bit of crit­i­cism direct­ed at the tools and tech­niques that macro­econ­o­mists use, e.g. crit­i­cism of dynam­ic sto­chas­tic gen­er­al equi­lib­ri­um (DSGE) mod­els, but that crit­i­cism is mis­placed. The tools and tech­niques that macro­econ­o­mists use are devel­oped to answer spe­cif­ic ques­tions. If we ask the right ques­tions, then we will find the tools and tech­niques need­ed to answer them. The prob­lem with macro­eco­nom­ics is not that it has become over­ly math­e­mat­i­cal – it is not the tools and tech­niques we use to answer ques­tions. The prob­lem is the soci­ol­o­gy with­in the eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sion that pre­vents some ques­tions from being asked. Why, for exam­ple, were the very ques­tions we need­ed to ask pri­or to the Great Reces­sion ridiculed by impor­tant voic­es with­in the pro­fes­sion? The key to a bet­ter eco­nom­ics is to ask bet­ter ques­tions, and that will require a much more open mind – par­tic­u­lar­ly from those in charge of what gets pub­lished in eco­nom­ic jour­nals – about the kinds of ques­tions econ­o­mists are allowed to ask.”

This is an inter­pre­ta­tion that would be under­stood by some­one in the nat­ur­al sci­ences (e.g. geo­physics, or epi­demi­ol­o­gy, or cli­ma­tol­ogy.) Ask­ing the right ques­tions is the key. Thoma asks why these ques­tions were active­ly dis­cour­aged. He knows the answer, but leaves us to con­nect the dots. It was the result of a pro­fes­sion being hijacked by an aggres­sive ide­ol­o­gy bent on sup­press­ing real inquiry, and sub­sti­tut­ing a kind of Lysenkoist agen­da. It was made pos­si­ble by a revamped sys­tem in which the prin­ci­ples of aca­d­e­m­ic auton­o­my and objec­tive inquiry have become mere ecto­plas­mic traces. Macro­econ­o­mists who did ask the right ques­tions did­n’t seem to get far in aca­d­e­m­ic careers, or end up in the cushy cir­cum­stances that more “co-oper­a­tive” ones did. Or rather, that’s the case in the core, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly in the periph­ery. The seri­ous ques­tion­ing tends to take place in sec­ond-tier uni­ver­si­ties, where the moose or the wal­la­bies nib­ble the shrub­bery around the quad­ran­gle. All the more pow­er to ’em, I say. Lysenko’s ghost can’t patrol them all.