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Faculty of Economics

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Lawson, T.

What is wrong with modern economics, and why does it stay wrong?

Journal of Australian Political Economy

Vol. 2017(80) pp. 26-42 (2017)

Abstract: What is wrong with modern economics? The clear answer is that it is mostly simply irrelevant. It has been becoming increasingly so for about seventy to eighty years now. Its formulations, in the main, are patently and repeatedly unrealistic, and so able to provide little or no explanatory insight or understanding of the world in which we live. Human beings, in the formulations of modern economists, are regularly endowed with perfect foresight, rational expectations, omniscience, amazing powers of calculation or 'rationality', rendered homogeneous, placed in scenarios where just two commodities exist etc., etc. It is all really quite ludicrous if the goal is social illumination.

Author links: Tony Lawson  

Publisher's Link: http://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/b629ee_60de6cc3e362437794857fa52c2197e2.pdf


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