Is Professor Summers saying that the subset of scholars who were studying macro have been collectively wasting their lives?
Pointer from Mark Thoma. I believe that they have been wasting their lives. I believe it even more strongly after reading Randall Wray’s Why Minsky Matters. The time-wasters treat the history and institutional characteristics of financial intermediaries as irrelevant. Minsky, correctly, thought that these things were important.
>> time-wasters treat the history and institutional characteristics of financial intermediaries as irrelevant
Brilliantly said, imaginary paradigms can create a tendency to ignore how various structural layers and their properties determine macro indices.
Put this way, it sounds better. Most effort is macro (pardon the pun) wasted.
Important for what? I can’t think of an economist who would make the claim that financial markets are trend stationary.
That’s a much different statement than saying financial instability matters for macroeconomic stability. At least macro stability in any sense that really matters.