Which school of economic thought do you prefer?

[RI]

Which school of economic thought do you prefer?

I strongly prefer the Keynesian school, obviously. I'm curious to see how it breaks down for the rest of the forum, or at least this board.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I prefer the Austrian School. It complements my political views, which is the main criterion most people will use to answer this question. I am just willing to admit it.

[Earth]

Marxist, and other.

[tpfkaw]

Austrian School, except that I'm not a goldbug.  I just think the government should get out of the currency manipulation business.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Yes, Preston pointed there to a specific problem I have with nearly all the 'schools' mentioned here except Marxism - their ahistoricism and also, more obliquely, their human universalism.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

Keynesian generally, with the American (if it counts) mixed in as well.

[ag]

Let's be clear: you have beasts of very different type listed.

The "Chicago school" and the (Neo)-Keynsians (it's hard to find the ones without a "neo" these days) are among the many currently existing approaches to the study of macroeconomics (though, these days we'd, probably, be speaking more often of the Minnesota school, when discussing the freshwater thinking ) ). Neither term is particularly applicable to any other branch of economics: as a microeconomist, for instance, I have no opinion whatsoever on the relative virtues of these (nor is anyone expecting me to have such an opinion). Still, I am aware of the broad division of that world into the freshwater and the saltwater types - macroeconomists are a bit like crocs ) The saltwaters concentrate on all sorts of somewhat undermodelled imperfections, which they tend to accept exogenously, as descriptions of the empirical fact. Whereas the freshwaters want to model everything from the first principles, so if any imperfections are there, they have to be generated endogenously. Still, methodologically the two "schools" are rather similar: you, probably, need graduate training in economics to figure out which paper in a learned journal is representing what.

Both the Marxism and the Austrian School have at one point been important schools of economic thought. They played enormous role in formulating modern economics. Marxism, though much more traditionalist of the two (in terms of his approach Marx was much more faithful to the classics like Adam Smith or Ricardo than most of his contemporaries), turned out to be somewhat a dead end, considering the development in economics that began already in Marx's own lifetime. To the extent that modern Marxists still exist in the economic profession, they tend to concentrate on issues of planning and such - things that, frankly, bore most modern economists to death. The bulk of self-identified Marxists wouldn't be identified as economists by the rest of us. Still, people like Duncan Foley or John Roemer have made some very important contributions to the modern economic profession at large fairly recently (and are still active).  So, at least, there are people who are both Marxists and economists out there today )

Austrian school was, in a sense, much more important until fairly recently. A lot of the modern views on basic micro where either formed by the Austrians or in conversation with them. Unfortunately, "Austrianism" is dead as a scientific school today. Its last two representatives of note were Hayek and Mises, who, unquestionably, were great economists. Unfortunately, what right now mascarades as the Austrian school is a Misesian religious cult dedicated to the eternal interpretation of the words of the Prophet. Their rejection of the scientific method as applied to social sciences has put them completely outside of not merely economics, but of any science. Their rejection of the common language of modern research has made them unintelligible to anyone but themselves. There are some decent people trying to bridge the gap between the modern Austrians and the rest of the humanity, but they are few and I don't envy them ) For the most part (with very few exceptions), it's a cult and a theology, not economics at all.

[ag]

BTW, who here can define each "school" ) It's a funny thing to vote on something without a clear idea of what is what.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

isn't the Chicago school pretty much a variety of the Austrian?

[CatoMinor]

Austrian

[Bo]

Mostly Keynesian, but the Austrians have some good ideas.

[© tweed]

closest to Marxism. democracy can only exist where it exists at the point of production due to the necessary tendency of concentrated capital to take state power. however I have fundamental disagreements with orthodox Marxists and would hesitate to label myself as one.

[© tweed]

also, opebo would probably call himself a Keynesian.

[ag]

isn't the Chicago school pretty much a variety of the Austrian?

To the extent that they have about exactly nothing in common (other than both are somewhat associated w/ political conservatism) this is rather funny ))  For the Austrian cultists Chicagoans are worse than the Devil reincarnate, much worse than the Marxists. For Chicagoans the Austrians don't exist.

[tpfkaw]

By way of analogy, the Chicagoans are to the Austrians as the Keynesians are to the Marxists.  The Chicago and Keynesian schools have much more in common than the Austrian and Chicago schools.

[ag]

also, opebo would probably call himself a Keynesian.

He is anything but

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

isn't the Chicago school pretty much a variety of the Austrian?

What?  No, not at all, even though they often come to some of the same conclusions in support of minimal government interference.

I thought Hayek was instrumental in developing the Chicago school and the thought of people such as Milton Friedman?

[Јas]

Other: Institutionalist

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Keynesian, but I'm open to just about anything.

[J. J.]

I'm closest to to the Chicago School, but probably a bit more iconoclastic.

[opebo]

also, opebo would probably call himself a Keynesian.

If we are to have the brutality of capitalism, Keynesianism is the best way to manage it.  But I'm also somewhat Marxist.  

However I'm skeptical that there is any difference between 'economic thought' and political preference.

[ag]

However I'm skeptical that there is any difference between 'economic thought' and political preference.

That's because you don't really bother to learn economics ) In terms of political preference, an average Chicago econ guy is, probably, not that much different from an average self-identified Austrian: in Chicago they do tend to be very much pro free-market. However, in terms of their views on economics, they wouldn't be even able to agree on what IS economics ) There is really not much of a possibility of a reasonable conversation between them. And, of course, a fairly recent student of Lucas (can't be more Chicago than that) went on to be a member of the Venezuelan cabinet under Chavez (and one of the early ideologues of that regime) )

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm not an economist, so I don't know. I'm aware of the political/policy differences between advocates of the Chicago and Keynesian schools (and think these are important, in historical terms, in their own right) but I don't know how they differ at actually looking at the workings of the economy; something that is, presumably, their main function as academics. I know very little about the way the Austrian school has looked at such things, and don't want to know more; I have no particular interest in seeing how sociopaths and their fanboys view the world. Marxism can mean any one of thousands of different approaches to almost anything and I don't know a thing about any specific Marxist approaches to economics as a distinctive subject. In any event, I'm not sure if you could honestly call such a thing Marxist given the massive importance of unity to Marxism. Marxist-influenced maybe (but how unusual is that in academia? All competent historians, sociologists and human geographers are Marxist-influenced, whether they want to admit it or not).

Ramble, ramble. It's late and none of this makes sense. Like life? No.

[Gustaf]

I think Ag summed up everything I would have wanted to say plus more that I didn't know. So, yeah.

I think modern economics on the whole is sufficiently scientific for the whole concept of schools to be a bit superfluous. I mean, you wouldn't refer to differences within the medical or physicist community as "schools of thought" the way you do in history or sociology. Or at least that is my uneducated impression.

There are points of contention and some of them are linked to politics, but that's really it.

[opebo]

However I'm skeptical that there is any difference between 'economic thought' and political preference.

That's because you don't really bother to learn economics

Actually no, the skepticism is the reason I didn't bother to learn economics.  I don't know much about religion either.