La Historia Económica según el Financial Times y The Economist

Carlo Franzoni (1786-1819), El carro de la Historia, 1819. National Statuary Hall, Washington D. C.

Sobran las palabras y los comentarios. Copio y pego parte de la editorial publicada por el Financial Times el pasado 12 de noviembre (editorial completa aquí)

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The recital of laws and ritual genuflection towards mathematical models may lend the subject a certain intellectual respectability, but much of this is spurious. Mathematics should, of course, not be neglected, but the emphasis on abstract theory should be downgraded in favour of a more balanced intellectual diet. This should include the relatively neglected discipline of economic history.

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The market for economic theorists may not have gone the way of the subprime collateralised debt obligation but it is not what it was. There is a recognition that disciplines such as psychology, history and finance need to be more firmly embedded in economics teaching. The route to publication in top journals should involve empirical research, not just the firing up of an Excel spreadsheet.

The Economist sigue en la misma línea... (texto completo aquí)

It is not just students who are dissatisfied with economics. Professional economists can spot easy wins too. Many think economic history should be more widely taught, citing the fact that Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve, influenced by his knowledge of the Great Depression and of Japan’s slump in the 1990s, outperformed rich-world peers. It is not merely American financial history that matters, either. Stanley Fischer, governor of Israel’s central bank between 2005 and 2013, says he found economic history (including Walter Bagehot’s famous rule—to provide generous amounts of cash to troubled banks, but to charge them for it) useful in combating the 2008 crisis. This material had long fallen off the syllabus in most universities before the crash.