Greenspan’s new book is obviously intended to show that his errors were only partial and that he has found useful ways to correct them, and thus to refurbish his reputation as oracle-in-chief. It fails. His argument is thematically vague and analytically weak. In the end it sounds like the same old right-wing conviction that the unregulated or very lightly regulated market knows best.
Begin with the book’s title and subtitle. The analogy between a map and a theory is a useful device. Fathers-in-law are always pointing out that any economic theory ignores this or that obvious fact about the real-world economy. But a map on the scale of one to one is precisely useless. A map on the scale of one to 500,000 is useful for most purposes, but you cannot expect it to show every bend in the road or every dirt track leading north. Greenspan does not seriously discuss the goals and the limitations of reasoning about the economy. He talks some about his early life as a forecaster, and he is clear that economic policy has to be based on forecasts: policies undertaken now will have effects in the future, and sensible economic policy usually has long-run goals anyway. But the reader of this book will learn little or nothing about the process of forecasting other than that it is difficult and that the results are always uncertain. Duh.
The new Greenspan concedes that the decisions made by participants in the economy are not always governed by rational adaptation to given facts, and that this failure leads to unpredictability and instability. Instead the economist-forecaster-policymaker has to take account of “animal spirits.” (The phrase was introduced into economics by Keynes and was recently revived by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller.) This is a step in the right direction, but even here Greenspan does a poor job. He rattles off a long list of what he regards as “inbred” propensities of people and groups to behave irrationally, or at least non-rationally, in economic matters. They include fear, euphoria, aversion to risk, preference for early rewards over larger later ones, herd behavior, dependency on peers, a bias toward dealing with people close to home, competitiveness, reliance on a code of values, a bias toward one’s relatives, self-interest, and self-esteem. That comes to twelve propensities, some broad, some narrow, some vague, some precise, some important, some less so, and Greenspan says that there are more of them.
- Review of Alan Greenspan's new book The Map and the Territory: Risk, Human Nature, and the Future of Forecasting
Begin with the book’s title and subtitle. The analogy between a map and a theory is a useful device. Fathers-in-law are always pointing out that any economic theory ignores this or that obvious fact about the real-world economy. But a map on the scale of one to one is precisely useless. A map on the scale of one to 500,000 is useful for most purposes, but you cannot expect it to show every bend in the road or every dirt track leading north. Greenspan does not seriously discuss the goals and the limitations of reasoning about the economy. He talks some about his early life as a forecaster, and he is clear that economic policy has to be based on forecasts: policies undertaken now will have effects in the future, and sensible economic policy usually has long-run goals anyway. But the reader of this book will learn little or nothing about the process of forecasting other than that it is difficult and that the results are always uncertain. Duh.
The new Greenspan concedes that the decisions made by participants in the economy are not always governed by rational adaptation to given facts, and that this failure leads to unpredictability and instability. Instead the economist-forecaster-policymaker has to take account of “animal spirits.” (The phrase was introduced into economics by Keynes and was recently revived by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller.) This is a step in the right direction, but even here Greenspan does a poor job. He rattles off a long list of what he regards as “inbred” propensities of people and groups to behave irrationally, or at least non-rationally, in economic matters. They include fear, euphoria, aversion to risk, preference for early rewards over larger later ones, herd behavior, dependency on peers, a bias toward dealing with people close to home, competitiveness, reliance on a code of values, a bias toward one’s relatives, self-interest, and self-esteem. That comes to twelve propensities, some broad, some narrow, some vague, some precise, some important, some less so, and Greenspan says that there are more of them.
- Review of Alan Greenspan's new book The Map and the Territory: Risk, Human Nature, and the Future of Forecasting
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