Leading orthodox economists could not agree on the crisis’s actual causes

Evidence

What you will quickly learn from the experience is that when these Princes of Theory were forced to summarize in ten minutes their take on the causes of the crisis, all the subtle models and technical details were soon left behind, and those economists reverted to fairly simple explanations already found in the more popular press. Nobel winners generally come off comparably worse than people who actually have had some relevant experience. There are moments of clarity, when someone realizes that generalizations turn out to be much less valid and more rare than theorists often presume. Furthermore, in the period of give-and-take, one august economist bemoaned that “we” really do not know the true causes of the crisis, and another counseled humility, since five participants there were seen to proffer eight or more different causes. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 809

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader argument about the neoclassical orthodoxy’s inability to explain economic events, central to Mirowski’s ‘thought collective’ thesis in this book. — connects to: Horkheimer’s plan for interdisciplinary economic collaboration failed for lack of capable collaborators — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1318; The crisis seemed confusing because elites deliberately obscured the truth — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1769; Orthodox economics models structurally excluded the possibility of major crises — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 491 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• The 2008 crisis discredited efficient-market economists in public policy debate #qualifies (0.85) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 158