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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
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.
