After the 'new Great Crisis' exploded in 2008 it is widely recognized that mainstream macroeconomics - the last result of Lucas's anti-Keynesian revolution of the 1980s which tried to give macroeconomics sound neo-Walrasian microeconomic bases - has failed to anticipate and then appraise the crisis. Has this crisis revealed a failure of this macroeconomics as a scientific theory? Mainstream macroeconomists defend their models on the basis of their alleged superiority in terms of clarity and coherence. The thesis of this paper is that this claim about superiority is false. The paper argues that the reasons for the failure of mainstream macroeconomics - in particular its poor predictive performance and poor interpretative weakness - reside in the implications of the neo-Walrasian legacy and the problems connected with the implementation of that programme.

Is Neo-Walrasian Macroeconomics a Dead End?

Sella L
2015

Abstract

After the 'new Great Crisis' exploded in 2008 it is widely recognized that mainstream macroeconomics - the last result of Lucas's anti-Keynesian revolution of the 1980s which tried to give macroeconomics sound neo-Walrasian microeconomic bases - has failed to anticipate and then appraise the crisis. Has this crisis revealed a failure of this macroeconomics as a scientific theory? Mainstream macroeconomists defend their models on the basis of their alleged superiority in terms of clarity and coherence. The thesis of this paper is that this claim about superiority is false. The paper argues that the reasons for the failure of mainstream macroeconomics - in particular its poor predictive performance and poor interpretative weakness - reside in the implications of the neo-Walrasian legacy and the problems connected with the implementation of that programme.
2015
Istituto di Ricerca sulla Crescita Economica Sostenibile - IRCrES
Neo-Walrasian Macroeconomics
Lucas
DSGE models
theory-driven econometrics
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14243/327435
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