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The mathematics used in economics for decades may be the wrong kind
The underlying logic needs a rethink.
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Maybe the problem economics faces isn’t that it is too mathematical, but that the mathematics it has used for decades is needlessly narrow, says the writer.
PHOTO: AFP
Tim Harford
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The first term of my master’s degree in economics was an alarming experience. The econometrics was bewildering. The macroeconomics was even more mysterious.
Everything was drenched in incomprehensible mathematics – or, to be more honest, maths that I could not comprehend. Most worrying of all was the microeconomics: This was a subject that had felt so natural and so enjoyable as an undergraduate, but now, it, too, had retreated into an austere stronghold of calculus.
