Way back in college, a bloke called Sinclair Davidson was my lecturer for final-year economics. Since then, he’s started writing for the excellent Catallaxy blog, which is full of interesting stuff: here’s the story behind the Aussie stimulus package; and here’s a wonky but interesting piece on hospitals in Canberra. (He also wrote a great piece for the Institute of Public Affairs on the benefits of migration – worth a read.)
And then I stumble across this:
Nobody wants to eat steak with a sweet potato mash and a jus. Substitute for chips.
How come we never covered this in lectures?
To be fair on Gruen’s financial advice, let’s remember that the modelling community calls this situation Garbage in, garbage out. Or as Gruen more politely put it:
‘extremely difficult for formal models to come to terms with [the credit crisis, and so the situation]..calls for judgment. What came out of formal modelling would depend on what you put in…’