High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft to buy additional rights. ft/cms/s/2/27a2027e-5698-11e3-8cca-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2mG7DzyHW “The predominant view in the profession is that there’s one particular way of doing economics. It’s basically to set up some mathematical model, the more complicated the better,” he says, advocating instead what he calls a multidisciplinary approach. “In a biology department, you have people doing all sorts of different things. So some do DNA analysis, others do anatomy, some people go and sit with gorillas in the forests of Burundi, and others do experiments with rats. But they are called biologists because biologists recognise that living organisms are complex things and you cannot understand them only at one level. So why can’t economists become like that? Yes, you do need people crunching numbers, but you also need people going to factories and doing surveys, you need people watching political changes to see what’s going on.”
Posted on: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 20:57:14 +0000