Breakthroughs and brickbats
What economists can learn from the discipline’s seminal papers
IT IS easy enough to criticise economists: too superior, too blinkered, too often wrong. Paul Samuelson, one of the discipline’s great figures, once lampooned stockmarkets for predicting nine out of the last five recessions. Economists, in contrast, barely ever see downturns coming. They failed to predict the 2007-08 financial crisis.
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Breakthroughs and brickbats”
From the July 23rd 2016 edition
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