SilasBarta comments on Mathematicians and the Prevention of Recessions - Less Wrong

8 Post author: JonahSinick 25 May 2013 04:12AM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 26 May 2013 05:18:41PM 2 points [-]

You are exactly correct. Policy must switch to a less gameable metric in order to avoid situations like that. But it's important to remember that the problem isn't just the potential for schemers, but that, even without schemers, the extra trades you've forced to goose NGDP are even less indicative of economic goodness than the normal "GDP = good" assumption requires!

And I don't think anyone can come up with such a metric without solving the (holy grail level) problem of microeconomic foundations for macro.

Comment author: jsalvatier 26 May 2013 08:32:02PM -1 points [-]

Wait, now I'm confused. Micro-foundations for monetary economics exist, and I know you know, because we've talked about them at length. Maybe you mean that there's more to macro beyond monetary economics?

Comment author: SilasBarta 26 May 2013 09:31:32PM 1 point [-]

I'm referring the commonly-known problem of deriving macro results from micro, which we also talked about in those exchanges, and during which you rejected the claim that failing to so derive results is a reason to reject the macro conclusions. If you remember differently, give a link.

Comment author: jsalvatier 29 May 2013 07:41:57AM 0 points [-]

Macro results are definitely derivable from micro principles: http://goodmorningeconomics.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/the-backrub-economy-a-simple-mathematical-model-of-monetary-disequilibrium/ .

I think we discussed that we haven't seen the AS/AD models derived from micro principles. I'm not sure this can't be done, its just not commonly discussed, and I don't see a good use for those concepts so I haven't tried to find a derivation.