Krugman blamed economists’ crisis blindness on aesthetic attachment to math

Evidence

Paul Krugman had kicked things up a notch with his September 2009 magazine article “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?” which pointed out the “profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy,” but then attributed it to the bizarre notion that “economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.” — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 449

Categorization

• XREF: Krugman’s ‘beauty for truth’ diagnosis contrasts directly with how Mirowski later frames the crisis as grounding for the neoliberal thought collective — connects to the 1984 formulation, DSGE modeling literature, and the general theme of neoclassical aesthetics. — connects to: Mainstream economics dismissed dissenting figures for lacking mathematical rhetoric — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1772

Broader Connections

• Mainstream economics dismissed dissenting figures for lacking mathematical rhetoric #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1772