Most economists I have read use the algebra I learnt in my first course in phsyics. Pathetic.

I respect those making econometrics, since they know what they are doing and know the algebra necessary to present their data. It is probably the most impresive part of eocnomics. It reminds me of the ethnologists going to a foreign land to really get soem data bout human behvior.

And then you have a huge chunk of economists which do not look for data ina systematic way because all the y want is to poof a particular "way of looking at things". Generally , the models have a set of stupid hyopthesis, which are never true in real life. They also use extremlly low level algebra..and soemtimes they use it worng...

This is why I prefer, beside econometrics, those economsits that know what they are doing. They know that at the end of the day they are doing history with a bit of algebra (De Long, Krugman...) while playing the games of the other eocnomists trying to find an stupid model with stupid hyopthesis which could describe their historical insights using a more complex non-relistic model. And this is an statement (or simialr) that I have read again and again done by the economists I like more...

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude