its really awesome having entire class lectures online to supplement my current college courses, especially for such an undervalued, developing and controversial topic as Economics.
Fabulous video about advanced microeconomics, it covers lot of issues in economics. theoretical and empirical theory session was awesome. Lot of information about Bayesian Probability theory.
Ohh my god thank you so much! I took one graduate micro theory class in 2012 for a master's program and was completely enthralled. I'm grateful to be able to brush up on this!
My formal study of economics (both micro and macro) occurred over four decades ago. As a business management and finance student, I did not find these courses very useful. Not until years later did I come to understand why. That was when I began to study the works of the great political economists, such as Adam Smith, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx and (most significantly) Henry George. These writers attempted to explain how the world actually works. The study of political economy required no proficiency with higher mathematics. Nor was it necessary to acquaint oneself with scientific-sounding terminology that came into use in order to separate the discipline of economics from that of political economy. I also came across the books of an economics professor named Harry Gunnison Brown, whose textbook contained no abstract equations attempting to reflect how the price mechanism functioned as a market clearing device.
There is a major use for economic theory, even as it stands today, although it usually is more relevant to public than private decision making. For example, nothing short of a DSGE model can help you coherently integrate masses of data into a coherent frame work for everything that, say, a central bank would do. They need a coherent way to make forecast, simulate alternative policy paths for interest rate choices, as well as cost-benefit analysis when making medium term commitments like choosing a target inflation rate. As I speak right now, you have some options if you want to do any one of these things individually, but not if you insist on internal consistency. The same can be said about other types of cost-benefit analysis using microeconomic models. You need to impose the structure of optimising behavior to tease out conclusions about what is desirable or not -- because the whole argument rests on a notion of option cost. By the way, as someone who studied management and finance, I am sure you came across decision models to evaluate investment projects. Does net present value ring a bell? You know that this decision rule is consistent with profit maximization -- in fact, it is formally justified by profit maximization. You can read a 1958 paper by Hirshleifer on this. The nice thing is that he tells you when exactly this rule of thumb (pick the biggest net present value of mutually exclusive alternatives) is going to be misleading. The comment extends obviously to real option analysis, if you ever ran into it, as well as many simple rules people use that are special cases of NPV, or of some modified stochastic version of it. It's not impractical at all: it's exactly how people argue over the profitability of a project. There is plenty to be wanting of economics -- and I can tell a lot about it, being a PhD student. But it's definitely not useless and it's not because you are working on improving models that you should throw everything out of the window.
@@stephanesurprenant60 I certainly agree that the development of models is useful, particularly in businesses evaluating the potential for expansion into new markets or the introduction of new products, changing pricing structures, whether to hire more employees or invest in new technologies and capital goods. Of course, these decisions all affected by whether an entity is privately- or publicly-owned (and thereby subjected to pressure from investor groups to maximize short-term shareholder value). You mention the use of models to assist the decision-making of central bankers, which is extremely important. Hopefully, the analytical tools of the central banks has improved since the 2008 financial crash. As you may know, Joseph Stiglitz was charged in 2010 with bringing together top experts on the financial system to come up with a comprehensive analysis of the causes of the financial crash and advance systemic changes that would (hopefully) prevent yet another collapse. I had the opportunity to review the reform and later brought together a group of economists to discuss the report. The general agreement was that nothing in the proposals of the Stiglitz report addressed one of the fundamental drivers of the cyclical dynamics: land speculation. Mason Gaffney (emeritus professor of Economics at the University of California) argued that the one immediate regulatory reform that should have been adopted was to prohibit any financial institution that accepted government insured deposits from extending credit for the purchase of land or acceptance of land as collateral for borrowing.
its really awesome having entire class lectures online to supplement my current college courses, especially for such an undervalued, developing and controversial topic as Economics.
Fabulous video about advanced microeconomics, it covers lot of issues in economics. theoretical and empirical theory session was awesome. Lot of information about Bayesian Probability theory.
Ohh my god thank you so much! I took one graduate micro theory class in 2012 for a master's program and was completely enthralled. I'm grateful to be able to brush up on this!
i don't quite get why they had to present themselves. BTW GREAT JOB, it really nice that comments were activated.
와... 소문만 무성했던 뉴스쿨 한국분을 여기서 보네요!
i want to go there
My formal study of economics (both micro and macro) occurred over four decades ago. As a business management and finance student, I did not find these courses very useful. Not until years later did I come to understand why. That was when I began to study the works of the great political economists, such as Adam Smith, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx and (most significantly) Henry George. These writers attempted to explain how the world actually works. The study of political economy required no proficiency with higher mathematics. Nor was it necessary to acquaint oneself with scientific-sounding terminology that came into use in order to separate the discipline of economics from that of political economy. I also came across the books of an economics professor named Harry Gunnison Brown, whose textbook contained no abstract equations attempting to reflect how the price mechanism functioned as a market clearing device.
henry george is great economist
There is a major use for economic theory, even as it stands today, although it usually is more relevant to public than private decision making.
For example, nothing short of a DSGE model can help you coherently integrate masses of data into a coherent frame work for everything that, say, a central bank would do. They need a coherent way to make forecast, simulate alternative policy paths for interest rate choices, as well as cost-benefit analysis when making medium term commitments like choosing a target inflation rate. As I speak right now, you have some options if you want to do any one of these things individually, but not if you insist on internal consistency.
The same can be said about other types of cost-benefit analysis using microeconomic models. You need to impose the structure of optimising behavior to tease out conclusions about what is desirable or not -- because the whole argument rests on a notion of option cost.
By the way, as someone who studied management and finance, I am sure you came across decision models to evaluate investment projects. Does net present value ring a bell? You know that this decision rule is consistent with profit maximization -- in fact, it is formally justified by profit maximization. You can read a 1958 paper by Hirshleifer on this. The nice thing is that he tells you when exactly this rule of thumb (pick the biggest net present value of mutually exclusive alternatives) is going to be misleading. The comment extends obviously to real option analysis, if you ever ran into it, as well as many simple rules people use that are special cases of NPV, or of some modified stochastic version of it. It's not impractical at all: it's exactly how people argue over the profitability of a project.
There is plenty to be wanting of economics -- and I can tell a lot about it, being a PhD student. But it's definitely not useless and it's not because you are working on improving models that you should throw everything out of the window.
@@stephanesurprenant60 I certainly agree that the development of models is useful, particularly in businesses evaluating the potential for expansion into new markets or the introduction of new products, changing pricing structures, whether to hire more employees or invest in new technologies and capital goods. Of course, these decisions all affected by whether an entity is privately- or publicly-owned (and thereby subjected to pressure from investor groups to maximize short-term shareholder value).
You mention the use of models to assist the decision-making of central bankers, which is extremely important. Hopefully, the analytical tools of the central banks has improved since the 2008 financial crash. As you may know, Joseph Stiglitz was charged in 2010 with bringing together top experts on the financial system to come up with a comprehensive analysis of the causes of the financial crash and advance systemic changes that would (hopefully) prevent yet another collapse. I had the opportunity to review the reform and later brought together a group of economists to discuss the report. The general agreement was that nothing in the proposals of the Stiglitz report addressed one of the fundamental drivers of the cyclical dynamics: land speculation. Mason Gaffney (emeritus professor of Economics at the University of California) argued that the one immediate regulatory reform that should have been adopted was to prohibit any financial institution that accepted government insured deposits from extending credit for the purchase of land or acceptance of land as collateral for borrowing.
cool😝
Great class but the trigger warning part is laughable lol
Turkeyyy!!!!
What he's actually saying is economics is no science it's a religion. LOL