IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/usg/dp2009/2009-18.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Die Krise der Wirtschaft: Auch eine Krise der Wirtschaftswissenschaften?

Author

Listed:
  • Gebhard Kirchgässner

Abstract

Is the economic and financial crisis also a crisis of Economics? From different perspectives, today there is rather harsh criticism of Economics as a Social Science. In this paper, first, some of the recent failures of Economics are discussed. Then some of the criticisms are taken up that are less convincing, in particular criticisms of the application of the economic model of behaviour, the mathematisation of Economics and the principle of value freedom. The appropriate role of the government as well as of competition is discussed, and also which other consequences should be drawn for Economics as a science but also for economic policy. Finally, we debate whether there is, besides the economic crisis, really as crisis of Economics as well.

Suggested Citation

  • Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2009. "Die Krise der Wirtschaft: Auch eine Krise der Wirtschaftswissenschaften?," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2009 2009-18, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    • Handle: RePEc:usg:dp2009:2009-18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/dp2009/DP-0918-Ki.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrei Shleifer, 1998. "State versus Private Ownership," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(4), pages 133-150, Fall.
    2. D. Colander & H. Follmer & A. Haas & M. Goldberg & K. Juselius & A. Kirman & T. Lux & B. Sloth, 2010. "The Financial Crisis and the Systemic Failure of Academic Economics," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 6.
    3. Thomas Jordan & Angelo Ranaldo & Paul Söderlind, 2009. "The implementation of SNB monetary policy," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 23(4), pages 349-359, December.
    4. Lars P. Feld & Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2003. "Die Rolle des Staates in privaten Governance Strukturen," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 139(III), pages 253-285, September.
    5. Conny Wunsch & Michael Lechner, 2008. "What Did All the Money Do? On the General Ineffectiveness of Recent West German Labour Market Programmes," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(1), pages 134-174, February.
    6. Thomas Crossley & Mario Jametti, 2013. "Pension Benefit Insurance and Pension Plan Portfolio Choice," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(1), pages 337-341, March.
    7. Friedrich Schneider & Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2009. "Financial and world economic crisis: What did economists contribute?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 140(3), pages 319-327, September.
    8. Brunner, Johann K., 1996. "Transition from a pay-as-you-go to a fully funded pension system: The case of differing individuals and intragenerational fairness," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 131-146, April.
    9. Alan P. Kirman, 1992. "Whom or What Does the Representative Individual Represent?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 117-136, Spring.
    10. Homburg, Stefan, 1990. "The Efficiency of Unfunded Pension Schemes," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 146, pages 640-647.
    11. Wyplosz, Charles, 2009. "Macroeconomics After the Crisis," Walter Adolf Jöhr Lecture 2009, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science, Institute of Economics (FGN-HSG).
    12. Diomande M. Ahmed & Heintz James S. & Pollin Robert N., 2009. "Why U.S. Financial Markets Need a Public Credit Rating Agency," The Economists' Voice, De Gruyter, vol. 6(6), pages 1-4, June.
    13. Kunreuther, Howard & Slovic, Paul, 1978. "Economics, Psychology, and Protective Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 68(2), pages 64-69, May.
    14. Dan Ariely & Uri Gneezy & George Loewenstein & Nina Mazar, 2009. "Large Stakes and Big Mistakes," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(2), pages 451-469.
    15. Bruno S. Frey & Margit Osterloh, "undated". "Yes, Managers Should be Paid Like Bureaucrats," IEW - Working Papers 187, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    16. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    17. Roger Congleton, 2009. "On the political economy of the financial crisis and bailout of 2008–2009," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 140(3), pages 287-317, September.
    18. Pio Baake & Rainald Borck (ed.), 2007. "Public Economics and Public Choice," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-540-72782-8, June.
    19. Lucas, Robert Jr, 1976. "Econometric policy evaluation: A critique," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 19-46, January.
    20. Benoit Mandelbrot, 2015. "The Variation of Certain Speculative Prices," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Anastasios G Malliaris & William T Ziemba (ed.), THE WORLD SCIENTIFIC HANDBOOK OF FUTURES MARKETS, chapter 3, pages 39-78, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    21. Christopher A. Sims, 1982. "Policy Analysis with Econometric Models," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 13(1), pages 107-164.
    22. Jagannathan Ravi & Boyd John, 2009. "Avoiding the Next Crisis," The Economists' Voice, De Gruyter, vol. 6(7), pages 1-5, July.
    23. Paul M. Healy & Krishna G. Palepu, 2003. "The Fall of Enron," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(2), pages 3-26, Spring.
    24. Gabriel Fagan & Julian Morgan (ed.), 2005. "Econometric Models of the Euro-area Central Banks," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3918, December.
    25. Fama, Eugene F, 1991. "Efficient Capital Markets: II," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(5), pages 1575-1617, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2013. "Zur Rolle der Ökonometrie in der wissenschaftlichen Politikberatung," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 14(1-2), pages 3-30, February.
    2. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2011. "Kaderschmieden der Wirtschaft und/oder Universitäten? Der Auftrag der Wirtschaftsuniversitäten und –fakultäten im 21. Jahrhundert," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 12(3), pages 317-337, August.
    3. Feld, Lars P. & Köhler, Ekkehard A., 2011. "Zur Zukunft der Ordnungsökonomik," Freiburg Discussion Papers on Constitutional Economics 11/2, Walter Eucken Institut e.V..
    4. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2015. "Wissenschaftlicher Fortschritt in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften: Einige Bemerkungen," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 135(2), pages 209-248.
    5. Spahn, Peter, 2013. "Subprime and euro crisis: Should we blame the economists?," FZID Discussion Papers 83-2013, University of Hohenheim, Center for Research on Innovation and Services (FZID).
    6. Dürmeier, Thomas, 2012. "Wissenschaftlicher Pluralismus als Entdeckungsverfahren und das Monopol der Modellökonomik," ZÖSS-Discussion Papers 30, University of Hamburg, Centre for Economic and Sociological Studies (CESS/ZÖSS).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Geweke, J. & Joel Horowitz & Pesaran, M.H., 2006. "Econometrics: A Bird’s Eye View," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0655, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    2. Didier SORNETTE, 2014. "Physics and Financial Economics (1776-2014): Puzzles, Ising and Agent-Based Models," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 14-25, Swiss Finance Institute.
    3. J. Doyne Farmer & John Geanakoplos, 2008. "The virtues and vices of equilibrium and the future of financial economics," Papers 0803.2996, arXiv.org.
    4. D. Sornette, 2014. "Physics and Financial Economics (1776-2014): Puzzles, Ising and Agent-Based models," Papers 1404.0243, arXiv.org.
    5. Detlef Seese & Christof Weinhardt & Frank Schlottmann (ed.), 2008. "Handbook on Information Technology in Finance," International Handbooks on Information Systems, Springer, number 978-3-540-49487-4, December.
    6. Ariane Szafarz, 2015. "Market Efficiency and Crises:Don’t Throw the Baby out with the Bathwater," Bankers, Markets & Investors, ESKA Publishing, issue 139, pages 20-26, November-.
    7. J. Doyne Farmer, 2002. "Market force, ecology and evolution," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 11(5), pages 895-953, November.
    8. Fischer, Thomas & Riedler, Jesper, 2014. "Prices, debt and market structure in an agent-based model of the financial market," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 95-120.
    9. Carmen López-Martín & Sonia Benito Muela & Raquel Arguedas, 2021. "Efficiency in cryptocurrency markets: new evidence," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 11(3), pages 403-431, September.
    10. Alessio Moneta, 2005. "Causality in macroeconometrics: some considerations about reductionism and realism," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 433-453.
    11. Lu Zhang, 2017. "The Investment CAPM," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 23(4), pages 545-603, September.
    12. Lu Zhang, 2019. "Q-factors and Investment CAPM," NBER Working Papers 26538, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Giuseppe Garofalo & Paolo Fetoni, 2013. "The Chicago School after the crisis of the new millennium," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 677-711, February.
    14. Kevin D. Hoover & Òscar Jordà, 2001. "Measuring systematic monetary policy," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 83(Jul), pages 113-144.
    15. Giorgio Fagiolo & Paul Windrum & Alessio Moneta, 2006. "Empirical Validation of Agent Based Models: A Critical Survey," LEM Papers Series 2006/14, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    16. Roland Rothenstein, 2018. "Quantification of market efficiency based on informational-entropy," Papers 1812.02371, arXiv.org.
    17. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2018_022 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Anju Bala & Kapil Gupta, 2020. "Examining The Long Memory In Stock Returns And Liquidity In India," Copernican Journal of Finance & Accounting, Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika, vol. 9(3), pages 25-43.
    19. Sam Howison & David Lamper, 2001. "Trading volume in models of financial derivatives," Applied Mathematical Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(2), pages 119-135.
    20. Tim Bollerslev & Robert J. Hodrick, 1992. "Financial Market Efficiency Tests," NBER Working Papers 4108, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Ernest Aigner & Florentin Gloetzl & Matthias Aistleitner & Jakob Kapeller, 2018. "The focus of academic economics: before and after the crisis," ICAE Working Papers 75, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic Crisis; Financial Crisis; Economic Theory; Role of the Government; Mathematics; Value Freedom; Pension System.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A10 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - General
    • H10 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:usg:dp2009:2009-18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Martina Flockerzi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vwasgch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.