Archive for the ‘freakonomics’ tag
The Purpose of Economics
I am somewhat disappointed by comments over at the Freakonomics blog.
Steven Levitt is running a little contest to see who can finish a sentence uttered by his fellow economist Gary Becker over lunch:
“The only purpose of economics is _______.”
Well, I entered my guess. The disappointment for me is the sheer number of people who are answering “allocating resources.”
Economics is a study of what people actually do — not an exercise in telling them what to do or how to do it. Yes, the tools can be useful for understanding how to be more efficient, but the purpose isn’t making the damned trains run on time!
