Cordon of Conformity: Why DSGE models Are Not the Future of Macroeconomics

The Rebuilding Macroeconomic Theory Project, led by David Vines and Samuel Wills (2020), is an important, albeit long overdue, initiative to rethink a failing mainstream macroeconomics. Professors Vines and Wills, who must be congratulated for stepping up to the challenge of trying to make mainstream macroeconomics relevant again, call for a new multiple-equilibrium and diverse (MEADE) paradigm for macroeconomics. Their idea is to start with simple models, ideally two-dimensional sketches, that explain mechanisms that can cause multiple equilibria. These mechanisms should then be incorporated into larger DSGE models in a new, multiple-equilibrium synthesis – to see how the fundamental pieces of the economy fit together, subject to it being ‘properly micro-founded’. This paper argues that the MEADE paradigm is bound to fail, because it maintains the DSGE model as the unifying framework at the center of macroeconomic analysis. The paper reviews 10 fundamental weaknesses inherent in DSGE models which make these models irreparably useless for macroeconomic policy analysis. Mainstream macroeconomics must put DSGE models, once and for all, in the Museum of Implausible Economic Models – and learn important lessons from non-DSGE macroeconomic approaches.

Implications for Regional Science of the “Rebuilding Macroeconomic Theory Project”

The inability of macroeconomists to anticipate the Global Financial Crisis or reproduce it in their models has led to an important stock-taking of deficiencies in, and necessary modifications to, theories and models used pervasively by researchers and taught to graduate students. This stock-taking—the so-called “Rebuilding Macroeconomic Theory Project,” organized by David Vines and Samuel Wills—has provided an opportunity for economy-wide modelers (who include regional scientists) to consider whether the theories and models they employ are adequate and appropriate to the tasks to which they put them. In this paper I provide a brief report on the project, retrace the development of macroeconomics, and summarize responses by prominent macroeconomists to a set of questions posed by organizers of the project, while drawing implications of these questions and responses for regional science. I then offer original suggestions from a regional scientist’s perspective on what is missing from the “benchmark” macro-model, how financial frictions can be introduced, how behavioral foundations might be modified, how heterogeneity of agents might be captured, and what new stylized facts need to be explained. I proceed to illustrate how several of the suggested changes can be integrated in economy-wide models by drawing on a study of the impacts of monetary policy on consumption by different income groups in Indonesia. I close the paper by posing a number of “big-picture questions” on the implications of the RMTP for economy-wide modelers and regional scientists to ponder and by offering a brief reflection and aspiration.

A Stylistic Reading of Selected Poems from Niyi Osundare’s A City without People

This paper critically examines the stylistic traditions and innovations inherent in the poetics of Niyi Osundare, one of Africa’s most renowned literary-linguistic artists. Using the Text World Theory (TWT) as conceptual framework, it penetrates into the poet’s mind with the intention of answering the fundamental questions in stylistics: why and how has the writer chosen to use particular words, sentences and metaphors (imagery) in particular ways to achieve particular objectives. Ten poems are purposively selected from the anthology titled ‘A City without People: Katrina Poems’, published in 2011. In a way that speaks volume to his literary genius, Osundare makes the reader involved in the artistic depiction of the ruinous aftermath of the great Hurricane Katrina tragedy through the poetic use of the English language. The data, explored through the aforementioned theory, project the personal and communal feeling of loss, destruction and alienation in a way that unites the different (pieces of) poems as a whole unit (text). The findings reveal a style that, reminiscent of the vintage Osundare, validates his place as one of the few poets who maximise the total potentials of language in the rendition of art.

Racial Identity and Racial Attitudes Among White Americans

This chapter explores how five dimensions of white racial identity are associated with one another and with white Americans’ racial attitudes. Drawing on data from the 2014 General Social Survey Identity Module, we first examine the relationships among five aspects of whites’ racial identities: prominence, salience, private self-regard, public self-regard, and verification. We then examine the implications of these aspects of racial identity for whites’ reported and preferred distance from, stereotypes about, and support for policies designed to benefit black Americans. In so doing, we contribute to the long-standing identity theory project of demonstrating how identities shape other elements of social life, including the construction and maintenance of social inequalities. We also contribute to the growing research literature on “whiteness” and its implications for intergroup relations in the United States.

Minorities in Indian Urdu News: Ahmadis, Journalistic Practice and Mediated Muslim Identity

A case study of a protest campaign against the Ahmadiyya community in Punjab and its coverage in Urdu language news media of India, this paper locates its narrative at the intersection of media, politics and religion. It seeks to advance the field theory project beyond western media systems by applying it to Indian Urdu news. It demonstrates that the religious field is a neighbouring field of Urdu news and the former wields powerful influence over the latter. Moreover, the religious field with the help of news media uses politics to have its voice heard. The paper specifically reads into the manner in which Urdu dailies covered Majlis Ahrar-e Islam Hind’s (a Muslim interest group) protest campaign to cancel Pranab Mukherjee’s (then Finance Minister of India) visit to Qadian, Punjab in 2009. He was set to participate in an annual function of the Ahmadis who are a persecuted minority group among Muslims. The protest campaign, with an active support of Urdu dailies, got transformed into a media campaign against the Ahmadis and was successful in getting the Minister’s visit cancelled. The paper investigates the dynamics of collaboration between Urdu news and the ulama that made possible transformation of anti-Ahmadi campaign into a media campaign. It attempts to elucidate the uncritical support that Majlis Ahrar-e Islam Hind received from Urdu dailies. For this purpose, it delves into normative structure of Urdu news field and its journalistic practices. It draws attention to their implications for Indian Muslim identity.

From Utility Measurement to the Representational Theory of Measurement

Chapter 15 offers a conclusion to the history of measurement theory by reconstructing the origins of the representational theory of measurement in the early work of Patrick Suppes. In particular, the chapter shows that Suppes’s superseding of the unit-based understanding of measurement that he had embraced in the early 1950s, his endorsement of a liberal definition of measurement à la Stanley Smith Stevens in the mid-1950s, his conceiving of the project of an axiomatic underpinning of this notion of measurement in the late 1950s, and the realization of this project during the 1960s all have their origins in the utility analysis research he conducted from 1953 to 1957 within the Stanford Value Theory Project. The representational theory of measurement received full-fledged expression in Foundations of Measurement (1971), a book coauthored by Suppes, Duncan Luce, David Krantz, and Amos Tversky, which quickly became the dominant theory of measurement.

Social work education in action: How studying for the profession facilitates the adaptation of internationally educated social workers in Canada

This article presents the results and theorization of a 4-year Grounded Theory project that sought to understand the processes and dynamics involved in the professional adaptation of internationally educated social workers now practicing in Canada. In-depth interviews with 66 participants, who undertook social work education outside of Canada and have subsequently settled to practice in the country, were conducted. Results highlight that the social work educational background of the professionals not only offers key conceptual, theoretical, and analytical foundations needed to adapt knowledge and skills to practice abroad, but also provides tools to navigate and negotiate professional adaptation processes as a whole. We conclude that ultimately, social workers may adapt well to their new work contexts because of the transferability of social work skills, knowledge, and values to new practice settings, thus facilitating interventions with services users and also their own process of professional adaptation.