Talk Is Economical

Ever since this recession hit, I've felt the need to shore up my rudimentary understanding of Economics. If for no other reason than to deal with the staggering amount of bullshit economic punditry that is bombarding us all lately.

I've found a wonderful podcast called EconTalk, hosted by Russ Roberts, a Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Roberts has a consistently interesting line up of guests, mostly (but not all) economists. The interviews are free of jargon and academic pomposity, but not dumbed down like NPR's "Planet Money". The episodes cover a wide variety of topics from the workings of the Federal Reserve to third-world economic development.

The most interesting episode so far was Roberts' interview with Nassim Taleb, author of two books that I keep hearing about on various blogs and science podcasts: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable and Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets.

In the interview, Taleb makes a radical claim: the mathematical analysis that economists hold up as evidence that Economics is a science is based on shaky ground since it all presumes that human economic behavior and economic events, such as discoveries of new technology, conform to normal statistical bell curves. "Fooled by Randomness" lays out Taleb's case that economic phenomena don't behave in nice, statistically predictable ways.

Taleb argues that Economics should be regarded as pragmatic or moral philosophy, not a science. I'm reserving judgement on his claim until I get a chance to read his books, but I find some comfort in it. I don't know about you, but I've always gotten the impression that economists never agree on anything and can never fully prove any of their claims -- maybe Taleb has figured out why that is.