On Greg Mankiw’s website one will find a blog-video, dated Tuesday, January 19th, entitled “A Discussion About My Favorite Textbooks”. The participants included Greg Mankiw, Peter Bofinger, Rudiger Bachmann, and Anna Reisch; and questions were called in by Vinit Rishi, Sascha Buetzer, Janina Urban, and Thomas Kopp.
Our only comment is that in doing pure science all macroeconomists must distinguish and keep separate pure science, applied science, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and political philosophy. Usually what they think is their pure science is actually an impure admixture of two or more fields of phenomena. If one intends a pure science, consisting of the explanatory relations of objective macroeconomic phenomena, one should not contaminate the field with illegitimate importations of sociology, class conflict, psychology, psychopolitical inclinations, etc. Otherwise there will inevitably be differences of opinion whose source is differences of sentiment, which will never be settled; the macroeconomists will argue superficially and endlessly about their unintelligible admixtures. (Continue reading)