Wednesday, November 07, 2007

As elegant as modern econometrics has become, it is not up to the task of delivering policy prescriptions

--- banker and regulator Alan Greenspan, in his memoir The Age of Turbulence, quoted in a BusinessWeek book review, 1 October 2007

In context, in the BW review:

But equally important—and far less noticed—is Greenspan's disdain for academic economics. "As elegant as modern-day econometrics has become, it is not up to the task of delivering policy prescriptions," Greenspan writes. "The world economy has become too complex and interlinked." Indeed, academic economists are virtually nonexistent in the book. Greenspan's successor, Princeton University economist Ben Bernanke, is mentioned only once, in a photo caption.