Martin Wolf in Paul Krugman o tem, zakaj so ekonomski modeli dobri in zakaj jih nikoli ne bi smeli jemati preveč resno, pač pa staviti na poznavanje zgodovine, izkušnje in intuicijo. Modeli so zgolj igračke, s katerimi si pomagamo pri razmišljanju ali pri razlaganju pojavov, ne morejo pa verno ponazoriti stvarnosti, kaj šele napovedovati prihodnosti.

I guess the problem is that too many economists have the wrong attitude toward models. They’re not Truth; they’re intuition pumps, gadgets you use to clarify your story. You go badly wrong when you take them too seriously, and either forget that they’re just models or reject them because the world isn’t that simple.

Vir: Paul Krugman

My view is that economists have to ask themselves whether their models of the economy and how the economy works are the right ones absolutely. And I think the answer they would reach is that for certain important purposes they clearly aren’t.

If people are going to understand therefore what might go on, what the risks are, and so forth, they need other sources of information beyond the standard models and standard teaching.

I tend to think the most important aspect of this is a profound understanding of economic history.

One of the enormous advantages that the US had in the crisis is that the chairman of the Federal Reserve was not just a very smart man, which he was, but one who missed the possibility of the crisis, there’s no question about that, but that man was a profound student of the Depression. So he had been an applied economic historian.

People have to understand, when they’re being taught economics, how little we know, how limited our data are, and how unbelievably complex our economic and financial system is.

I think people have to begin with profound humility and know an awful lot of economic history, as I’ve suggested. And they have to be told every day, “What I’ve just told you is almost certainly wrong.”

Doctors are supposed to be taught to be humble in the face of their ignorance. And the human body is in fact a pretty simple thing compared to the essentially insubstantially material thing which is the economic system.

Vir: Martin Wolf