Economics in Trouble

Theoretical economics, for understandable reasons, is rarely a topic of public discussion. For economists, it is perhaps just as well; they are spared the task of explaining their highly abstract and often irrelevant models. But times of crisis produce demands for explanation and remedies, which in turn lead to a reexamination of the theory underlying policy prescriptions. The demands for explanation seem only reasonable since economics claims a special status among social sciences as the m...