Some excerpts from "Dilemmas of an Economic Theorist", by Ariel Rubinstein, Econometrica, Vol. 74, No. 4 (Jul., 2006), pp. 865-883
What on earth am I doing? What are we trying to accomplish as economic theorists? We essentially play with toys called models. We have the luxury of remaining children over the course of our entire professional lives and we are even well paid for it. We get to call ourselves economists and the public naively thinks that we are improving the economy's performance, increasing the rate of growth, or preventing economic catastrophes. Of course, we can justify this image by repeating some of the same fancy sounding slogans we use in our grant proposals, but do we ourselves believe in those slogans? I recall a conference I attended in Lumini, France, in the summer of 1981 that was attended by the giants of the game theory profession. They were standing around in a beautiful garden waiting for dinner after a long day of sessions. Some of us, the more junior game theoreticians, were standing off to the side eavesdropping on their conversation. They loudly discussed the relevance of game theory and one of them suggested that we are just "making a living." I think he merely intended to be provocative, but nonetheless his response traumatized me. Are we no more than "economic agents" maximizing our utility? Are we members of an unproductive occupation that only appears to others to be useful?
我到底在干些什么？我们这些经济理论家到底想得到什么？我们其实是在玩一种叫做”模型“的玩具。我们很幸运能够在整个职业生涯都像孩子一样地玩，而且还有人付高薪。我们管自己叫经济学家，老百姓傻傻的还以为我们能让经济良好运行，增加GDP，防止经济危机。当然，我们可以不断重复一些fancy的口号以保住头上的光环，可我们自己相信这些口号吗？记得有次开会，博弈论的大牛们都来了。他们等晚饭时在聊天，我偷听了一下。他们在谈博弈论是否有用，其中有一个说搞博弈论的不过是为了”养家糊口“。我以为他开玩笑，不过他是说真的，这让我很受伤。难道我们只是一些最大化自己效用的经纪人吗？难道我们是一个看起来有用实际没有的行当里的一员吗？
Models in economic theory are also used to suggest regularities in human behavior and interaction. By regularities I mean phenomena that appear repeatedly in similar environments at different points in time and at different locations. I have the impression that as economic theorists, we hope that regularities will miraculously emerge from the formulas we write leisurely at our desks. Applied economists often feel the need for a model before they mine data for a pattern or regularity. Do we really need economic theory to find these regularities? Would it not be better to go in the opposite direction by observing the real world, whether through empirical or experimental data, to find unexpected regularities? Personally I doubt that we need pre- conceived theories to find regularities.
We have now arrived at the dilemma of modelless regularities. We would like a model to produce interesting conclusions that are consistent with observed regularities so we can claim that the model provides an explanation of those regularities, but are complicated theoretical models really necessary to find interesting regularities?
It is true that I would like to change the world. I want people to listen to me, but as an economic theorist, do I have anything to say to them? One of my earliest interests as an economic theorist was in bargaining theory. There were two reasons for this: First and foremost, bargaining theory involves the construction of models that are simple but nevertheless rich in results that have attractive interpretations. Indeed, the possibility of deriving meaningful statements through the manipulation of mathematical symbols was something that attracted me to economics in the first place. Second, as a child I frequented the open air markets in West Jerusalem and later the Bazaar in the Old City of Jerusalem, and as a result, bargaining had an exotic appeal for me. I came to prefer bargaining theory over auction theory, because auctions were associated with the rich whereas bargaining was associated with the common people. However, I never imagined that bargaining theory would make me a better bargainer. When people approached me later in life for advice in negotiating the purchase of an apartment or to join a team planning strategy for political negotiations, I declined. I told them that as an economic theorist I had nothing to contribute. I did not say that I lacked commonsense or life experience that might be useful in such negotiations, but rather that my professional knowledge was of no use in these matters. This response was sufficient to deter them. Decision makers are usually looking for professional advice, rather than advice based on commonsense. They believe, and perhaps rightly so, that they have at least as much commonsense as assertive professional economists. Nevertheless, I am a teacher of microeconomics. I am a part of the "machine" that I suspect is influencing students to think in a way that I do not particularly like. 我是一个微观经济学老师。我感觉自己像是一个”机器“上的一分子，我怀疑这个机器正让学生们忘记了常识，变成了书呆子。
This brings me to the fourth dilemma. I believe that as an economic theorist, I have very little to say about the real world and that there are very few models in economic theory that can be used to provide serious advice. However, economic theory has real effects. I cannot ignore the fact that our work as teachers and researchers influences students' minds and does so in a way with which I am not comfortable. Can we find a way to be relevant without being charlatans?
Rather than taking policy positions and engaging in intellectual challenges, they seek tenured positions, easy grant money, and influence over graduate students and the profession.
Academic economists belong to a careerist club, and the club has official ways of performing. Only by excelling in those ways does an economist survive and prosper. The official ways are locked in at the top universities -- MIT, Stanford, Chicago and some others -- and at the top journals. The journals are read by almost no one except other economists who are busy trying to excel in the club. Feeding on tax and tuition dollars, the club is incestuous: MIT produces Ph.D. members of the club, who then take over the university departments and journals and perpetuate the demand for new MIT Ph.D. club members.
But club performance doesn't contribute much to society. It is narrow, rigid and artificial. In purporting to address a policy issue, academic economists ignore all features of the real world that cannot be incorporated successfully in a formal model or statistical investigation. The club may be able to address many aspects of an issue, but each only in isolation, leaving us with a meaningless series of pedantic twirls. Club performance does not -- and cannot -- generate overall understanding of an issue.
Club members have two official ways of performing. The more exalted is model building. Mathematical functions are called "consumers," "producers" and so on, in a toy economy. Like solving a puzzle the model builder solves for an "equilibrium," which is treated as the conclusion of the story. Only one or two of the many particulars of human institutions can be modeled at a time.
The other genre of performing is finding statistical significance. If data exist or can be created, economists hunt for patterns in the data hoping to show a statistical result that is too improbable to be the result of mere chance and hence supporting a hypothesis.
Both model building and statistical significance are technical and formalistic, and club performance focuses on technique rather than subject matter. Model building goes by the code word "theory," yet many models make no reference to real-world happenings. Pointless work of this kind appears in The Journal of Economic Theory. Economic theory of what? Such journals have no connection with real issues, yet their official prestige is high.
For the most part, model building is a craft circle in which artisans uate each other's work using money that comes ultimately from sources (taxpayers, foundations, university students and donors) that care nothing and know nothing about such crafts. Outside those circle the crafts have no value.
Though important as a basic method of studying the world, statistical significance as practiced also tends toward irrelevance. Teasing out statistical results is a sort of accomplishment, but rarely are those results placed in a broader body of argument on a policy issue. If attempted, the fancy statistics are usually not the persuasive part of the argument. Very often simpler forms of evidence and reasoning are much more believable. But the simpler forms don't qualify as club performance.
In short, the complexity of the real world does not fit neatly into technical schemes. A serious discussion of policy leads into a rich thicket of moral, legal, political, historical and institutional matters. Because such study does not grant exalted status to logic chopping and statistical Easter-egg hunting, it is spurned by club officials. The profession's barren tendencies have been defied and criticized by some great postwar economists: Friedrich Hayek, Ronald Coase, Thomas Schelling, Albert Hirschman, James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, Israel Kirzner, Peter Bauer and Deirdre McCloskey. (Several of their critiques appear in the collection I edited, What Do Economists Contribute? just published by NYU Press and the Cato Institute.) Many of them have argued that the reasoning and evidence with the greatest oomph are very low tech. Indeed, their writing, like Adam Smith's, can be read and understood by nonspecialists. Important economic ideas can be taught and developed using only numerical examples, or even without mathematics at all. In fact, mathematics often poisons theoretical development.
Like a mime pretending to catch fish, club economists pretend to engage in policy discourse. But with the economist, unlike the mime, the pretense is not understood for what it is. At a mime show, if someone off-stage were to toss in an actual fish, as though it had been caught by the mime, the audience would laugh as reality intruded on the artistic performance. But at an academic performance, if anyone had the temerity to explain all the important ways in which the model failed to represent reality, club officials would close ranks and expel that insolent person.
Society would have much to gain if economists did work more relevant to policy issues. But at MIT, Stanford, Chicago and too many other schools, academic economists carry on within their own world, giving each other jobs, grant monies, and hollow praise, pretending all the while that their model building and statistical trivia contribute to society at large.如果经济学家们多做一些与政策相关的研究，社会就有福了。可在MIT，Stanford， Chicago以及很多其它学校，经济学家们在自己的圈子里玩，互相给工作，科研经费，以及空洞的称赞，煞有介事地好像他们搞的那些模型和计量把戏对社会有很大的贡献。
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