首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
考研
【F1】When Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize-winning economist, clashed with Niall Ferguson, a famous historian, over how best to respon
【F1】When Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize-winning economist, clashed with Niall Ferguson, a famous historian, over how best to respon
admin
2013-09-16
27
问题
【F1】
When Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize-winning economist, clashed with Niall Ferguson, a famous historian, over how best to respond to the economic crisis,Prof Ferguson’s response was humorously humble.
"A cat may look at a king," he wrote, "and sometimes a historian can challenge an economist. "
There has been some self-examination and soul-searching within the economics profession since the onset of the financial crisis.【F2】
Joseph Stiglitz, another Nobel prize-winning economist, has suggested that: "If science is defined by its ability to forecast the future, the failure of much of the economics profession to see the crisis coming should be a cause of great concern. "
Yet Prof Stiglitz’s conclusion is disappointingly mild: economists must simply search for new "paradigms" and then presumably go back into the business of scientific prediction.
For somebody educated as a historian, there is an obvious alternative conclusion to draw from Prof Stiglitz’s opening observation. And that is to conclude that the entire attempt to treat economics as a "science .. . defined by its ability to forecast the future" is misconceived.【F3】
The late Geoffrey Elton, a professor of modern history at Cambridge, argued that the function of the historian was to concentrate on the particular and the specific and to puncture the pretensions of social scientists, with their constant and futile effort to derive general, predictive laws from the study of the past.
In the current intellectual climate, it seems that Elton was saying something important. He was defending the empirical method and setting boundaries for what can be expected from the study of the past. Historians know that their work cannot be used to predict the future. History can suggest lessons and parallels and provide wisdom—but what it cannot do is provide a sociological equivalent of the laws of physics. Yet this seems to be the aspiration of many economists, who notoriously suffer from "physics envy".
Yet economists seem unlikely to abandon the belief that theirs is a discipline that makes "progress" and settles issues, in a way that resembles a hard science such as physics or chemistry.【F4】
Ben Bernanke, the current head of the Federal Reserve, exemplified this belief in a famous speech in 2004 on the "Great Moderation", in which he argued that there had been a "substantial decline in macroeconomic volatility", largely because of improved monetary policy, based on advances in economic thinking.
The subsequent financial and economic crash may have dented the confidence of some economists in particular tenets of their discipline.【F5】
But the Great Recession seems unlikely to dissuade many economists from the more fundamental belief that there are, indeed, predictive "laws" out there, just waiting to be discovered.
Rather than seeking to ape physicists, however, perhaps it is time for economists to learn a few lessons from history, or more precisely from historians.
【F1】
选项
答案
当诺叭尔经济学奖获得者保罗·克鲁格曼与著名历史学家尼尔·弗格森就如何更好地应对此次经济危机产生分歧时,弗格森教授的回应幽默而谦和。
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/AbO4777K
0
考研英语一
相关试题推荐
The"dawnofthedemocratizationoftheTVandfilmbusiness"probablymeans______.Thepurposeofthistextisprimarilyto_
Politicalcontroversyaboutthepublic-landpolicyoftheUnitedStatesbeganwiththeAmericaRevolution.(1)_____,evenbefore
Politicalcontroversyaboutthepublic-landpolicyoftheUnitedStatesbeganwiththeAmericaRevolution.(1)_____,evenbefore
Politicalcontroversyaboutthepublic-landpolicyoftheUnitedStatesbeganwiththeAmericaRevolution.(1)_____,evenbefore
Politicalcontroversyaboutthepublic-landpolicyoftheUnitedStatesbeganwiththeAmericaRevolution.(1)_____,evenbefore
Politicalcontroversyaboutthepublic-landpolicyoftheUnitedStatesbeganwiththeAmericaRevolution.(1)_____,evenbefore
Politicalcontroversyaboutthepublic-landpolicyoftheUnitedStatesbeganwiththeAmericaRevolution.(1)_____,evenbefore
Illiteracymaybeconsideredmoreasanabstractconceptthanacondition.WhenafamousEnglishwriterusedthe(1)_____overt
Theword"caste"(paragraph1)mostprobablymeansTheauthor’stoneintalkingaboutfireantsintheUSseemstobe
Theword"caste"(paragraph1)mostprobablymeansWhetherfireantsarepestsornotlargelydependsontheir
随机试题
设森林F中有三棵树,第一、第二、第三棵树的结点个数分别为M1、M2和M3。与森林F对应的二叉树根结点的右子树上的结点个数是()。
寒湿凝滞的痛经除去基本操作外还应:
患者男性,12岁。喜食煤渣,患儿缺乏的营养素是
A.月华丸B.保真汤C.补天大造丸D.麦门冬汤E.百合固金汤
砌筑水泥代号为M,强度等级不包括()。
下列各项中,属于会计数据存储介质的有()。
请你结合实际,谈谈如何作好旅游资源开发这篇大文章?
有效控制要求计划与()相适应。
(2013联考25)很多貌似过时的史学争论所代表的其实是一种力求接触人类最大多数的努力。想想有多少人已经消失在过去,他们在人数上远比如今生存在地球上的后代更多。最令人激动、最有创意的历史研究应该挖掘出事件背后那些人们所经历和体验过的人类生存状态。这类研究有
日本ではへやをしょうじでくぎっているため簡単にとりはずすことができます。へや
最新回复
(
0
)