Entries by Ed Walker

Keynes on Paradigm Change

John Maynard Keynes wrote about paradigm change long before Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In a 1926 essay, The End of Laissez-Faire Keynes discusses the lingering doctrines of Laissez-Faire economics well into the period economists were for the most part persuaded by the examples of Alfred Marshall, and the proponents of the marginal […]

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Pragmatic Aspects of Paradigm Change According to Kuhn

You’d think that in the sciences, paradigm change would be quick and painless. But Thomas Kuhn shows that it isn’t so in The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions. Most significant changes in physics, chemistry and astronomy, the examples Kuhn discusses, happen over a significant period of time. Kuhn discusses the problem at length. One factor is […]

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A Possible Paradigm of Neoliberal Economics

In this post I ask what the paradigm of economics might be, and if there is one. I did not address the question of the exact nature of the paradigm as discussed by Kuhn, leaving it at the broadest possible level: the theories, instruments, methods, prejudices and so on common to a community of scholars […]

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Paradigm Change in Science and Economics

In this post, I discussed normal science, a term used by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to describe the day to day work of scientists, focusing on the example of my brother’s work on transmission of pain in the body. In normal science, Kuhn explains, people expect the puzzles they choose to […]

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Paradigms in Economics

I am fascinated by the fact that economists do not seem fazed by the failure of their almost unanimous policy recommendations of deregulation and tax cuts, as I discuss here and here. Almost in unison, they chanted for decades that reducing taxes and regulation would spur growth for the benefit of all of us. The […]

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The Two Prongs of the Neoliberal Project

It may seem odd that a site focused on national security, domestic spying, and US foreign policy should have a secondary focus on the economy and on neoliberal economic theory. As I see it, these are the two prongs of the overall neoliberal project. That project is to free up the entire globe for the […]

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Will Economists Replace Lawyers as First Against the Wall?

The field [economics] is filled with anxious introspection, prompted by economists’ feeling that they are powerful but unloved, and by robust empirical evidence that they are different. The Superiority of Economists, by Marion Fourcade, Etienne Ollion and Yan Algan. In this post at Naked Capitalism, I explain that one big reason normal people don’t love […]

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Neoliberal Markets Deliver for the Rich

This is a cross-post with some modifications from Naked Capitalism. It is a truth universally acknowledged by all good citizens that markets are the only way to organize a society. The implication is that the role of government is to support and protect the operations of markets, and little else. I’ve been looking at this […]

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Homo Economicus and the Absurd Human

The neoliberal project offers a vision of two classes, the rich, and homo economicus, the consuming human. Homo economicus is a new creature in the world, one of a long string of visions offered to the great mass of humans by the elites. It has sunk in so quickly that we are often unable to […]

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