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Drezner on Alan Wolfe’s Incomptence

Started by Will Wilkinson · 12 months ago

Alan Wolfe’s prolix review essay of Bruno Frey and Dan Ariely’s recent books had a few nice insights, but my overwhelming judgment was that he simply doesn’t know enough about the subject to write a competent review. Dan Drezner picks up on a couple of Wolfe’s forehead-slappers. In a nuthsell, Wolfe thinks Milton Friedman and [...] ... Continue reading »

4 comments

  • Pithlord

    12 months ago

    You could make a case that Hayek, despite his Nobel, has been "marginal" to professional economics, although that would also seem to be true of Schumpeter, who Wolfe likes.

    But that isn't what Wolfe means anyway, since Milton Friedman is about as non-marginal as it is possible to be.
    reply
  • J.

    12 months ago

    He recently wrote an equally silly paper about John Stuart Mill's place in the canon for The Chronicle Review. You can check out Brian Leiter's response, and a link to the piece, here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2008/05/a...

    Wolfe apparently likes to write about things he is ignorant about.

    I don't know what his reputation is in his field, but in mine (philosophy) he is considered a joke among the few people than even know who he is.
    reply
  • mk

    12 months ago

    Herb's review is great.

    One thing that often gets neglected in talk of behavioral economics or rational actors is just how flexible the rational actor model is. It barely says anything!

    It says that "humans act so as to maximize Utility", where utility is undefined.

    This is not really a model, it is the outline of a research program. It is something like saying that human behavior is reducible to an algorithm.

    For any given rational actor model, a new school of research can always come along and say "there are systematic discrepancies between this model and teh behavior of real humans!" But the model is very flexible. Any systematic discrepancies can be explained by altering the model. Then the discrepancies go away.

    So that's how you get a good model of human action -- bit by bit. Is this how you get a good model of normative rules? No. Ethics is a whole different ballgame.

    It is totally arbitrary to hold up an algorithm that does not represent human action and say "humans should be like this!!" You need to have an independent motivation for saying this.
    reply
  • Tracy W

    11 months ago

    Frey is one of the only

    What an interesting term of phrase. What is it meant to imply?
    reply

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