on the 300 th anniversary of david hume's birth
it dawned on me
why the new micronomics of stgilitz et akerlof spence et al
is in the great hume's tradition of chastening anti dogmatics
anti zealotry and anti superstition
and consequent open minded policy eclecticism
stig's credit rationing job rationing non clearing market world
where
incalculable uncertainty are rife and pareto difficient externalities pandemic
surely makes a nice anti world to paul samuelson's
sum up
of two generations
encompassable by just two boys from gary
akerlof tells the story of this great transformation
"At the beginning of the 1960s, standard microeconomic theory was overwhelmingly based upon the perfectly competitive general equilibrium model.
By the 1990s the study of this model was just one branch of economic theory.
Then, standard papers in economic theory were in a very different style from now,
where economic models are tailored to specific markets and specific situations.
In this new style, economic theory is not just the exploration of deviations
from the single model of perfect competition.
Instead, in this new style, the economic model is customized
to describe the salient features of reality that describe the special problem under consideration."
