Thursday , November 21 2024
Home / Dirk Niepelt / The Trouble with Macroeconomics

The Trouble with Macroeconomics

Summary:
The “Trouble with Macroeconomics,” according to a working paper by Paul Romer that is posted on his website, relates to dishonest identification assumptions, in particular in DSGE models used for policy analysis. Romer singles out calibration, assumptions about distribution functions and strong priors as culprits. Romer argues that [b]eing a Bayesian means that your software never barfs and I agree with the harsh judgment by Lucas and Sargent (1979) that the large Keynesian macro models of the day relied on identifying assumptions that were not credible. The situation now is worse. Macro models make assumptions that are no more credible and far more opaque. Romer also offers a meta-model of himself as a critic of “post-real models” and “facts with unknown truth value.

Topics:
Dirk Niepelt considers the following as important: , , ,

This could be interesting, too:

Dirk Niepelt writes “Governments are bigger than ever. They are also more useless”

Dirk Niepelt writes The New Keynesian Model and Reality

Dirk Niepelt writes Urban Roadway in America: Land Value

Dirk Niepelt writes “Macroeconomics II,” Bern, Fall 2024

The “Trouble with Macroeconomics,” according to a working paper by Paul Romer that is posted on his website, relates to dishonest identification assumptions, in particular in DSGE models used for policy analysis. Romer singles out calibration, assumptions about distribution functions and strong priors as culprits.

Romer argues that

[b]eing a Bayesian means that your software never barfs

and

I agree with the harsh judgment by Lucas and Sargent (1979) that the large Keynesian macro models of the day relied on identifying assumptions that were not credible. The situation now is worse. Macro models make assumptions that are no more credible and far more opaque.

Romer also offers a meta-model of himself as a critic of “post-real models” and “facts with unknown truth value.”

Dirk Niepelt
Dirk Niepelt is Director of the Study Center Gerzensee and Professor at the University of Bern. A research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR, London), CESifo (Munich) research network member and member of the macroeconomic committee of the Verein für Socialpolitik, he served on the board of the Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics and was an invited professor at the University of Lausanne as well as a visiting professor at the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES) at Stockholm University.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *