There was a conference on globalization at Yale two weeks ago. The speakers were excellent! Rajan (Chicago), Bhagwati (Columbia), Nordhaus (Yale), Reinhart (Maryland), Ferguson (Harvard), Buiter (LSE) plus many others.
If I had to choose between going to the conference and to a Led Zeppelin concert, I might choose the conference… No, honestly, I would go to see the LZ, but you know what I mean…
The closing session of the conference turned in to a standard “Economists vs. The rest of the Social Sciences” debate. The initiator of the debate was Ferguson from Harvard. He was absolutely right in saying that the economists should listen to the historians, but his arguments were absolutely flawed. (So nobody accepted what he was saying…)
He said (I can’t recall the exact wording, but the idea is such): We (historians) were listening and learning from economists in past decades. So now, it’s the time for economists to listed and learn from historians…
Let me use the exact same argument.
Six year old child comes to his teacher and says: I’ve been listening to you the whole morning. So you are going to listen to me the whole afternoon…
The argument is ridiculous!
The reason why we (everyone, not just the economists) should listen to the historians is because we need to be reminded of the mistakes mankind did, such that we don’t repeat them. End of story!