The Economics of Crisis and the Crisis of Economics
The reputation of economics rises and falls with the business cycle. In the late 19th century, when capitalism faced what was then called the Great Depression, the world held economists in very low regard. For example, Walter Bagehot, longtime editor of London's The Economist, wrote:
Political Economy is not altogether satisfactory. It lies rather dead in the public mind. Not only does it not excite, the same interest as formerly, but there is not exactly the same confidence in it. Younger men either do not study it, or do not feel that it comes home to them, and that it matches with their most living ideas. New sciences have come up in the last few years with new modes of investigation, and they want to know what is the relation of economic science, as their fathers held it, to these new thoughts and these new instruments. They ask, often hardly knowing it, will this 'science' as it claims to be, harmonise with what, we now know to be sciences, or bear to be tried as we now try. [Bagehot 1885, p. 4]
http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/the-economics-of-crisis-and-the-crisis-of-economics/
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
530 898 5321 fax 530 898 5901 http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com