Robert Sturgeon wrote:

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 02:49:55 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:

(snippage of the rantings of an "expert" with letters after
his name, but no common sense at all)

In other words, you snip out, once again, authoritative
(relative to you) material that you simply cannot
refute, because it is right, you are wrong, and you
don't know what you're talking about.

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 03:13:36 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:

Robert Sturgeon wrote:

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 02:49:55 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:

(snippage of the rantings of an "expert" with letters after
his name, but no common sense at all)

In other words, you snip out, once again, authoritative
(relative to you) material that you simply cannot
refute, because it is right, you are wrong, and you
don't know what you're talking about.

Still no answer to Greenspan's concerns about investors'
irrational exuberance? Why not? Too much psychology going
on there?

--
Robert Sturgeon,
proud member of the vast right wing conspiracy
and the evil gun culture.

Robert Sturgeon wrote:

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 03:13:36 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:


Robert Sturgeon wrote:


On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 02:49:55 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:

(snippage of the rantings of an "expert" with letters after
his name, but no common sense at all)

In other words, you snip out, once again, authoritative
(relative to you) material that you simply cannot
refute, because it is right, you are wrong, and you
don't know what you're talking about.


Still no answer to Greenspan's concerns about investors'
irrational exuberance?

He wasn't speaking as an economist.

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 05:39:47 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:

Robert Sturgeon wrote:

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 03:13:36 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:


Robert Sturgeon wrote:


On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 02:49:55 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:

(snippage of the rantings of an "expert" with letters after
his name, but no common sense at all)

In other words, you snip out, once again, authoritative
(relative to you) material that you simply cannot
refute, because it is right, you are wrong, and you
don't know what you're talking about.


Still no answer to Greenspan's concerns about investors'
irrational exuberance?

He wasn't speaking as an economist.

LOL. That's rich.

--
Robert Sturgeon,
proud member of the vast right wing conspiracy
and the evil gun culture.

Robert Sturgeon wrote:

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 05:39:47 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:


Robert Sturgeon wrote:


On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 03:13:36 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:



Robert Sturgeon wrote:



On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 02:49:55 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:

(snippage of the rantings of an "expert" with letters after
his name, but no common sense at all)

In other words, you snip out, once again, authoritative
(relative to you) material that you simply cannot
refute, because it is right, you are wrong, and you
don't know what you're talking about.


Still no answer to Greenspan's concerns about investors'
irrational exuberance?

He wasn't speaking as an economist.


LOL. That's rich.

It's the truth. A lot of the fed chairman's job has
nothing whatever to do with economics...and economics,
of course, has nothing to do with psychology.

Time for a candid admission, bobby: you simply don't
know what you're talking about on the issue. You know
NEITHER economics nor psychology; you were just running
your ignorant mouth.

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 06:24:42 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:

Robert Sturgeon wrote:

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 05:39:47 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:


Robert Sturgeon wrote:


On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 03:13:36 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:



Robert Sturgeon wrote:



On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 02:49:55 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:

(snippage of the rantings of an "expert" with letters after
his name, but no common sense at all)

In other words, you snip out, once again, authoritative
(relative to you) material that you simply cannot
refute, because it is right, you are wrong, and you
don't know what you're talking about.


Still no answer to Greenspan's concerns about investors'
irrational exuberance?

He wasn't speaking as an economist.


LOL. That's rich.

It's the truth. A lot of the fed chairman's job has
nothing whatever to do with economics...and economics,
of course, has nothing to do with psychology.

On Fox News this morning (paraphrasing) "Economists
concerned about lower consumer confidence." Apparently
economists have some way of studying consumer confidence,
and even more apparently, they care what it is. But since
you say economists don't care about psychology, this must
have been an error. Or were those economists also not
speaking as economists?

Time for a candid admission, bobby: you simply don't
know what you're talking about on the issue. You know
NEITHER economics nor psychology; you were just running
your ignorant mouth.

Casting aspersions on another really doesn't win you any
debating points. Instead, you might consider explaining why
economists study consumer confidence, market sentiment, the
irrational exuberance that powers bubble markets, that sort
of thing - psychological aspects of economics that you
assure us economists don't care one whit about.

I do thank you for your rudeness, because it has prompted me
to do some more research into this matter. I did an Alta
Vista search using the key words: economics and psychology.
It returned 588,142 results. As might be expected from
reading your tirades, it is easy to find articles on the
differences between the two. But it is also easy to find
articles to the contrary. Heres one:

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/5-30-2002-19412.asp

"It is impossible to describe any human action if one does
not refer to the meaning the actor sees in the stimulus as
well as in the end his response is aiming at.
Ludwig von Mises"

"Economics - to the great dismay of economists - is merely a
branch of psychology. It deals with individual behaviour and
with mass behaviour. Many of its practitioners sought to
disguise its nature as a social science by applying complex
mathematics where common sense and direct experimentation
would have yielded far better results."

The article is quite lengthy. I won't repost it in its
entirety. It was written by an actual economist - "Sam
Vaknin, United Press International Senior Business
Correspondent, columnist for Central Europe Review and
eBookWeb.org, editor in the Open Directory Project, and
former economic advisor to the government of Macedonia and
to blue-chip firms in many countries." It looks like he has
better credentials than you do, and he doesn't agree with
you.

Here's a NEW (i.e., you probably didn't study it at UCLA)
textbook for sale at Amazon.com from Kluwer Academic
Publishers by Gerrit Antonides:

"Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Psychology in Economics and Business is the first textbook
in economic psychology that is targeted at students of
economics and business administration. It describes the
experiments and explains the psychological background
associated with the topics. The book presents the state of
the art in behavioral economics and economic psychology and
their applications to economics and business. The first part
organizes economic psychological themes within a common
paradigm. The applications belong to a great variety of
fields in economic psychology, including entrepreneurial
behavior, perceptions of price, risk, inflation and economic
activities, economic socialization, demand theory, attitudes
and brand images, decision making and heuristics, economic
expectations, well-being, poverty and consumer satisfaction.
The second part deals with information processing in a wider
sense. The psychological principles of consistency and
attribution are dealt with and recent developments in
rationality and choice under uncertainty are considered. A
chapter on game theory focuses on psychological factors in
several social dilemmas. Strategies and tactics in human
interaction are dealt with in a chapter on negotiation
behavior. The chapter on economic psychological methods
deals with the acquisition of knowledge from the observation
of economic behavior in reality and in experimental
settings."

While we're at Amazon, we can buy Market Volatility
by Robert J. Shiller.

"Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Market Volatility proposes an innovative theory, backed by
substantial statistical evidence, on the causes of price
fluctuations in speculative markets. It challenges the
standard efficient-markets model for explaining asset prices
by emphasizing the significant role that popular opinion or
psychology can play in price volatility.
Offering detailed analyses of the stock, the bond, and the
real estate markets, Shiller discusses the relations of
these speculative prices and extends the analysis of
speculative markets to macroeconomic activity in general."

"Robert J. Shiller is Stanley B. Resor Professor of
Economics at the Cowles Foundation, Yale University."

And this Shiller fellow is an actual economics professor -
at Yale, no less.

Here's a web page by Jim Mallon, Napier University:
http://www.nubs.napier.ac.uk/nubs/Econ/Staff/mallon.htm

"Research Interests
Psychology in Economics with particular relevance to
financial markets and personal financial planning."

Well, he's in Scotland, so he probably doesn't count...
right?

From the University of California's eScholarship Repository
http://repositories.cdlib.org/iber/econ/E02-313/

"A Perspective on Psychology and Economics
Matthew Rabin, University of California, Berkeley"

"ABSTRACT:
This essay provides a perspective on the trend towards
integrating psychology into economics. Some topics are
discussed, and arguments are provided for why movement
towards greater psychological realism in economics will
improve mainstream economics."

But he's a Jew, so he probably doesn't know anything about
economics or psychology, despite being a MacArthur
Foundation Fellow, right?

From MIT
http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres99/12.02.html

"DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
The goal of the MIT Department of Economics is to be the
best economics department in the world. To achieve this
goal, we strive to maintain an outstanding faculty, to have
the best Ph.D. program in economics, and to provide an
outstanding education in economics for MIT undergraduates."

....

"There were seven visiting faculty for all or part of the
1998-99 academic year. Visiting Professor Jean Tirole taught
a topics course in industrial organization. Visiting
Professor Roger Brinner taught macroeconomics. Visiting
Associate Professor Beatriz Armendariz de Aghion taught
development. Visiting Assistant Professor Jinyong Hahn
taught econometrics. Visiting Professor Alberto Alesina
taught macroeconomics. Visiting Professor Mathias
Dewatripont taught theory. Post-Doctoral Associate, Xavier
Gabaix, taught a topics course on psychology in economics."

But maybe you know more about economics than the Department
of Economics at MIT...

And then there's the International Association for Research
in Economic Psychology -
http://www.ex.ac.uk/~SEGLea/iarep/welcome.html

But they're just damned Brits, so...

Here's something from the Journal of Economic Psychology
http://www.elsevier.nl/inca/publicat...e/5/0/5/5/8/9/

"The Journal aims to present research that will improve
understanding of behavioral, especially socio-psychological,
aspects of economic phenomena and processes. The Journal
seeks to be a channel for the increased interest in using
behavioral science methods for the study of economic
behavior, and so to contribute to better solutions of
societal problems, by stimulating new approaches and new
theorizing about economic affairs. Economic psychology as a
discipline studies the psychological mechanisms that
underlie consumption and other economic behavior. It deals
with preferences, choices, decisions, and factors
influencing these, as well as the consequences of decisions
and choices with respect to the satisfaction of needs. This
includes the impact of external economic phenomena upon
human behavior and well-being. Studies in economic
psychology may relate to different levels of aggregation,
from the household and the individual consumer to the macro
level of whole nations. Economic behavior in connection with
inflation, unemployment, taxation, economic development, as
well as consumer information and economic behavior in the
market place are thus the major fields of interest.
The Journal of Economic Psychology contains: (a) reports of
empirical research on economic behavior; (b) assessments of
the state of the art in various subfields of economic
psychology; (c) articles providing a theoretical perspective
or a frame of reference for the study of economic behavior;
(d) articles explaining the implications of theoretical
developments for practical applications; (e) book reviews;
(f) announcements of meetings, conferences and seminars.
Special issues of the Journal may be devoted to themes of
particular interest. The Journal will encourage exchange of
information between researchers and practitioners by being a
forum for discussion and debate of issues in both
theoretical and applied research."

I could go on, but I don't think doing so would change your
mind, it being fixed on the day you received your degree
from UCLA.

Anyone else so foolish as to have read this thread so far is
welcome to reach his own conclusion as to whether or not
economics is a subset of psychology. People with better
credentials than Mr. Ball say it is.

--
Robert Sturgeon,
proud member of the vast right wing conspiracy
and the evil gun culture.

Wow! You made it all the way to 10:30AM (Pacific
Standard Time) before writing your knee-jerk, WRONG
defense of your stupid belief.


Robert Sturgeon wrote:

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 06:24:42 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:


Robert Sturgeon wrote:


On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 05:39:47 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:



Robert Sturgeon wrote:



On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 03:13:36 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:




Robert Sturgeon wrote:




On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 02:49:55 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:

(snippage of the rantings of an "expert" with letters after
his name, but no common sense at all)

In other words, you snip out, once again, authoritative
(relative to you) material that you simply cannot
refute, because it is right, you are wrong, and you
don't know what you're talking about.


Still no answer to Greenspan's concerns about investors'
irrational exuberance?

He wasn't speaking as an economist.


LOL. That's rich.

It's the truth. A lot of the fed chairman's job has
nothing whatever to do with economics...and economics,
of course, has nothing to do with psychology.


On Fox News this morning (paraphrasing) "Economists
concerned about lower consumer confidence." Apparently
economists have some way of studying consumer confidence,

No. They aren't concerned with the *why or how* of
consumer confidence AT ALL. All they are concerned
with is objectively measurable phenomena like
purchasing behavior. "Consumer confidence" isn't
measured by any form of psychological testing. It
refers to consumers' statements of their intended
purchases. When consumers state they feel confident
about the future, it is believed they spend on
big-ticket items; when they say they don't feel
confident, they are thought not to spend.

In fact, dummy, most statements by *economists* about
consumer confidence work BACKWARD: economists look at
actual consumer spending on durables, and then they
INFER something about consumer confidence from the
numbers. If consumers are spending on durables,
economists assume consumers really do feel confident
about the future; if durables spending is declining,
economists infer that consumers don't feel confident.

Economists don't study what is going on in consumers'
minds to make them feel "confident" or "unconfident".
That would be something psychologists might study.

and even more apparently, they care what it is.

No, they care about measuring the objective expression
of it.

But since
you say economists don't care about psychology, this must
have been an error.

It is an error in your understanding. The error is not
surprising, given that the sum total of your exposure
to academic economics consists of having perused ONE
introductory textbook for a class in which you were not
even enrolled yourself. In other words, the error is
not surprising given that, effectively, you are utterly
ignorant of economics.

Or were those economists also not speaking as economists?

They were speaking about something that went right over
your head.



Time for a candid admission, bobby: you simply don't
know what you're talking about on the issue. You know
NEITHER economics nor psychology; you were just running
your ignorant mouth.


Casting aspersions on another really doesn't win you any
debating points.

We are talking about your standing to be discussing the
field of economics. You have no standing, as you have
never studied the field, and nothing at all in your
background makes you credible to be pontificating about
what is and isn't in the purview of economics.

Instead, you might consider explaining why
economists study consumer confidence, market sentiment, the
irrational exuberance that powers bubble markets, that sort
of thing - psychological aspects of economics that you
assure us economists don't care one whit about.

They don't. You haven't found what you think you've
found. As a non-expert in the field, you are leaping
to unwarranted conclusions. As a stubborn pig-headed
fool, you are insisting that your non-expert guesses
are right.


I do thank you for your rudeness, because it has prompted me
to do some more research into this matter. I did an Alta
Vista search using the key words: economics and psychology.
It returned 588,142 results.

That's nice. It doesn't tell you a thing about how the
words are combined in the results.

As might be expected from
reading your tirades, it is easy to find articles on the
differences between the two. But it is also easy to find
articles to the contrary. Heres one:

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/5-30-2002-19412.asp

"It is impossible to describe any human action if one does
not refer to the meaning the actor sees in the stimulus as
well as in the end his response is aiming at.
Ludwig von Mises"

"Economics - to the great dismay of economists - is merely a
branch of psychology. It deals with individual behaviour and
with mass behaviour. Many of its practitioners sought to
disguise its nature as a social science by applying complex
mathematics where common sense and direct experimentation
would have yielded far better results."

In fact, having studied economics - unlike you - I am
very well aware of the fact that the 'Austrian School'
expresses disdain for the mathematization of economics
brought about by the 'English School'. Unfortunately
for you (and the Austrians), the English School,
beginning chiefly with Alfred Marshall, has almost a
monopoly on economics departments in the United States.

The article is quite lengthy. I won't repost it in its
entirety. It was written by an actual economist - "Sam
Vaknin, United Press International Senior Business
Correspondent, columnist for Central Europe Review and
eBookWeb.org, editor in the Open Directory Project, and
former economic advisor to the government of Macedonia and
to blue-chip firms in many countries."

In other words, it is written by a journalist who has
studied economics. That puts him leagues ahead of you,
but doesn't really make him an economist.

It also is ONE source. Goody for you.

It looks like he has
better credentials than you do, and he doesn't agree with
you.

Here's a NEW (i.e., you probably didn't study it at UCLA)
textbook for sale at Amazon.com from Kluwer Academic
Publishers by Gerrit Antonides:

"Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Psychology in Economics and Business is the first textbook
in economic psychology that is targeted at students of
economics and business administration. It describes the
experiments and explains the psychological background
associated with the topics. The book presents the state of
the art in behavioral economics

Ah, interesting. I know two actual, Ph.D. economists
at the Federal Trade Commission, people with whom I was
in the UCLA Ph.D. program. They scoff at and belittle
'behavioral economics' as not really being economics.

[snip stuff that doesn't say what bobby thinks it says]

Anyone else so foolish as to have read this thread so far is
welcome to reach his own conclusion as to whether or not
economics is a subset of psychology. People with better
credentials than Mr. Ball say it is.

(It will be a test of your integrity, which at present
appears to be exceedingly low, if you will leave the
following lengthy material in and respond to it. I
suspect that, lacking integrity and unable to discuss
the topic, you will snip it out.)

You haven't found ANYTHING that shows economics to be a
*subset* of psychology. That some economists are
beginning to become interested in psychology in no way
makes economics a *subset* of psychology. When I was
in UCLA's Ph.D. program and for a considerable period
of time before that, some big name academic economists
were very interested in biology; they attempted to use
certain mathematical models and econometric techniques
to explain in a systematic way phenomena that
biologists had observed but not very well explained.
Some of this in an effort to find analogues with human
economic actors, and some of it was simply to apply the
techniques to unexplained phenomena.

Did it turn economics into a *subset* of biology?
Clearly not; the suggestion would be stupid.

Economics also has borrowed some of the mathematical
techniques of physics, without turning economics into a
*subset* of physics.

A big problem for you, bobby, is that the formal study
of economics, at least in the Anglo-American tradition,
began perhaps 100 years before the formal study of
psychology. In fact, both grew out of *philosophy*.
If you had studied economics, which you haven't, you
might have learned that Adam Smith, author of _The
Wealth of Nations_ and generally considered to be the
father of the systematic study of economics in the
English speaking world, was a philosopher. He also
wrote a book called _The Theory of Moral Sentiments_,
and he considered himself first and foremost a
philosopher, not an economist.

Philosophers have long speculated on all manner of
fields that, ultimately, come to be derived fields in
their own right. That does not make the derived fields
"subsets" of one another. Aristotle speculated about
astronomy, physics, economics, ethics, aesthetics, and
lots more. They all stem from philosophy, not from one
another.

At some point, bobby, you are going to have to accept
that economics began, and largely continues, as the
study of things entirely *outside* the realm of
psychology. Trade flows, the gains from
specialization, the study of what makes a competitive
market: none of these is based in the study of psychology.

WOW!
You took that poor boy to the woodshed, but good!
He's so ignorant though, he'll never recognize it.
Just like my answers to his questionaire earlier this week, he ignored them
too.
Ignorance is as ignorance does.

"Robert Sturgeon" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 06:24:42 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:

Robert Sturgeon wrote:

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 05:39:47 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:


Robert Sturgeon wrote:


On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 03:13:36 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:



Robert Sturgeon wrote:



On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 02:49:55 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:

(snippage of the rantings of an "expert" with letters after
his name, but no common sense at all)

In other words, you snip out, once again, authoritative
(relative to you) material that you simply cannot
refute, because it is right, you are wrong, and you
don't know what you're talking about.


Still no answer to Greenspan's concerns about investors'
irrational exuberance?

He wasn't speaking as an economist.


LOL. That's rich.

It's the truth. A lot of the fed chairman's job has
nothing whatever to do with economics...and economics,
of course, has nothing to do with psychology.

On Fox News this morning (paraphrasing) "Economists
concerned about lower consumer confidence." Apparently
economists have some way of studying consumer confidence,
and even more apparently, they care what it is. But since
you say economists don't care about psychology, this must
have been an error. Or were those economists also not
speaking as economists?

Time for a candid admission, bobby: you simply don't
know what you're talking about on the issue. You know
NEITHER economics nor psychology; you were just running
your ignorant mouth.

Casting aspersions on another really doesn't win you any
debating points. Instead, you might consider explaining why
economists study consumer confidence, market sentiment, the
irrational exuberance that powers bubble markets, that sort
of thing - psychological aspects of economics that you
assure us economists don't care one whit about.

I do thank you for your rudeness, because it has prompted me
to do some more research into this matter. I did an Alta
Vista search using the key words: economics and psychology.
It returned 588,142 results. As might be expected from
reading your tirades, it is easy to find articles on the
differences between the two. But it is also easy to find
articles to the contrary. Heres one:

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/5-30-2002-19412.asp

"It is impossible to describe any human action if one does
not refer to the meaning the actor sees in the stimulus as
well as in the end his response is aiming at.
Ludwig von Mises"

"Economics - to the great dismay of economists - is merely a
branch of psychology. It deals with individual behaviour and
with mass behaviour. Many of its practitioners sought to
disguise its nature as a social science by applying complex
mathematics where common sense and direct experimentation
would have yielded far better results."

The article is quite lengthy. I won't repost it in its
entirety. It was written by an actual economist - "Sam
Vaknin, United Press International Senior Business
Correspondent, columnist for Central Europe Review and
eBookWeb.org, editor in the Open Directory Project, and
former economic advisor to the government of Macedonia and
to blue-chip firms in many countries." It looks like he has
better credentials than you do, and he doesn't agree with
you.

Here's a NEW (i.e., you probably didn't study it at UCLA)
textbook for sale at Amazon.com from Kluwer Academic
Publishers by Gerrit Antonides:

"Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Psychology in Economics and Business is the first textbook
in economic psychology that is targeted at students of
economics and business administration. It describes the
experiments and explains the psychological background
associated with the topics. The book presents the state of
the art in behavioral economics and economic psychology and
their applications to economics and business. The first part
organizes economic psychological themes within a common
paradigm. The applications belong to a great variety of
fields in economic psychology, including entrepreneurial
behavior, perceptions of price, risk, inflation and economic
activities, economic socialization, demand theory, attitudes
and brand images, decision making and heuristics, economic
expectations, well-being, poverty and consumer satisfaction.
The second part deals with information processing in a wider
sense. The psychological principles of consistency and
attribution are dealt with and recent developments in
rationality and choice under uncertainty are considered. A
chapter on game theory focuses on psychological factors in
several social dilemmas. Strategies and tactics in human
interaction are dealt with in a chapter on negotiation
behavior. The chapter on economic psychological methods
deals with the acquisition of knowledge from the observation
of economic behavior in reality and in experimental
settings."

While we're at Amazon, we can buy Market Volatility
by Robert J. Shiller.

"Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Market Volatility proposes an innovative theory, backed by
substantial statistical evidence, on the causes of price
fluctuations in speculative markets. It challenges the
standard efficient-markets model for explaining asset prices
by emphasizing the significant role that popular opinion or
psychology can play in price volatility.
Offering detailed analyses of the stock, the bond, and the
real estate markets, Shiller discusses the relations of
these speculative prices and extends the analysis of
speculative markets to macroeconomic activity in general."

"Robert J. Shiller is Stanley B. Resor Professor of
Economics at the Cowles Foundation, Yale University."

And this Shiller fellow is an actual economics professor -
at Yale, no less.

Here's a web page by Jim Mallon, Napier University:
http://www.nubs.napier.ac.uk/nubs/Econ/Staff/mallon.htm

"Research Interests
Psychology in Economics with particular relevance to
financial markets and personal financial planning."

Well, he's in Scotland, so he probably doesn't count...
right?

From the University of California's eScholarship Repository
http://repositories.cdlib.org/iber/econ/E02-313/

"A Perspective on Psychology and Economics
Matthew Rabin, University of California, Berkeley"

"ABSTRACT:
This essay provides a perspective on the trend towards
integrating psychology into economics. Some topics are
discussed, and arguments are provided for why movement
towards greater psychological realism in economics will
improve mainstream economics."

But he's a Jew, so he probably doesn't know anything about
economics or psychology, despite being a MacArthur
Foundation Fellow, right?

From MIT
http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres99/12.02.html

"DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
The goal of the MIT Department of Economics is to be the
best economics department in the world. To achieve this
goal, we strive to maintain an outstanding faculty, to have
the best Ph.D. program in economics, and to provide an
outstanding education in economics for MIT undergraduates."

...

"There were seven visiting faculty for all or part of the
1998-99 academic year. Visiting Professor Jean Tirole taught
a topics course in industrial organization. Visiting
Professor Roger Brinner taught macroeconomics. Visiting
Associate Professor Beatriz Armendariz de Aghion taught
development. Visiting Assistant Professor Jinyong Hahn
taught econometrics. Visiting Professor Alberto Alesina
taught macroeconomics. Visiting Professor Mathias
Dewatripont taught theory. Post-Doctoral Associate, Xavier
Gabaix, taught a topics course on psychology in economics."

But maybe you know more about economics than the Department
of Economics at MIT...

And then there's the International Association for Research
in Economic Psychology -
http://www.ex.ac.uk/~SEGLea/iarep/welcome.html

But they're just damned Brits, so...

Here's something from the Journal of Economic Psychology
http://www.elsevier.nl/inca/publicat...e/5/0/5/5/8/9/

"The Journal aims to present research that will improve
understanding of behavioral, especially socio-psychological,
aspects of economic phenomena and processes. The Journal
seeks to be a channel for the increased interest in using
behavioral science methods for the study of economic
behavior, and so to contribute to better solutions of
societal problems, by stimulating new approaches and new
theorizing about economic affairs. Economic psychology as a
discipline studies the psychological mechanisms that
underlie consumption and other economic behavior. It deals
with preferences, choices, decisions, and factors
influencing these, as well as the consequences of decisions
and choices with respect to the satisfaction of needs. This
includes the impact of external economic phenomena upon
human behavior and well-being. Studies in economic
psychology may relate to different levels of aggregation,
from the household and the individual consumer to the macro
level of whole nations. Economic behavior in connection with
inflation, unemployment, taxation, economic development, as
well as consumer information and economic behavior in the
market place are thus the major fields of interest.
The Journal of Economic Psychology contains: (a) reports of
empirical research on economic behavior; (b) assessments of
the state of the art in various subfields of economic
psychology; (c) articles providing a theoretical perspective
or a frame of reference for the study of economic behavior;
(d) articles explaining the implications of theoretical
developments for practical applications; (e) book reviews;
(f) announcements of meetings, conferences and seminars.
Special issues of the Journal may be devoted to themes of
particular interest. The Journal will encourage exchange of
information between researchers and practitioners by being a
forum for discussion and debate of issues in both
theoretical and applied research."

I could go on, but I don't think doing so would change your
mind, it being fixed on the day you received your degree
from UCLA.

Anyone else so foolish as to have read this thread so far is
welcome to reach his own conclusion as to whether or not
economics is a subset of psychology. People with better
credentials than Mr. Ball say it is.

--
Robert Sturgeon,
proud member of the vast right wing conspiracy
and the evil gun culture.

Don wrote:
WOW!
You took that poor boy to the woodshed, but good!

Uh...no; no, donny, he didn't do anything of the kind.

bobby's idée fixe (look it up, you monolingual doofus)
is that economics is a "subset" of psychology. It is
not, and he couldn't possibly show that it is. That
some economists have latterly become interested in some
aspects of psychology does not support his silly and
wrong claim.

Read what I wrote in reply to bobby. Oh, wait; you're
lowbrow moron, too, so you won't understand a word of
it. In a nutshell, the development of economics as an
academic discipline PREDATES the development of
psychology. That is not to say that philosophers
weren't already thinking of psychology long before it
became a separate discipline, but it is one of the
reasons economics, which emerged as a separate
discipline long before psychology did, is not a
"subset" of psychology.

bobby is a moron, and you have bet on the wrong horse.

Xref: kermit rec.gardens.edible:65934 rec.gardens:259994 misc.survivalism:503804 misc.rural:116439 rec.backcountry:173106

Don wrote:
"Jonathan Ball" wrote in message
ink.net...

Don wrote:


"Jonathan Ball" wrote


Not all leftists are "vegan", but all "vegans" are
leftists. Get it, now?


Be careful where you paint with that wide brush, you may paint yourself

in a

corner.

Nope. One very articulate and obviously intelligent
poster in alt.food.vegan thought he had disproved my
contention, because he is a reflexive defender of
Republican and conservative orthodoxy, and he said he
was "vegan". However, once I induced him to look in on
talk.politics.animals and
alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian, he realized, and freely
admitted, that he had erroneously conflated following a
"vegan" diet with BEING a "vegan". He no longer calls
himself a "vegan", because he eschews animal products
in his diet entirely for health reasons.


BTW: Your ASSumption isn't even close.

It's spot on.


Bring on your *30 political issues*, I double dog dare ya. LOL

I don't have a 30 point test, but the following 10
point quiz worked well enough two other times. When I
posted this in alt.food.vegan, twice about a year
apart, the self-styled "vegans" gave consistently
leftwing answers 85% of the time or higher. One of the
problems with this particular quiz is, it's possible to
disagree with the statement from either leftwing or
rightwing perspective. It's important, therefore, to
add a few *honest* explanatory words in addtion to your
yes/no or agree/disagree answer.

State whether or not you're "vegan" or tend to agree
with the tenets of "veganism", then answer yes or no,
or agree or disagree, along with a short explanation of
your answer.

1. Military service should be voluntary. (No draft)


There should be no gov't forced military.


2. Government should not control radio, TV, the press
or the Internet.


Gov't should control nothing.


3. Repeal regulations on sex for consenting adults.


No regulations on anything, that is for the free market, and free people to
decide.


4. Drug laws do more harm than good. Repeal them.


No laws, period. Laws do not change behavior, they only assign a penalty.


5. People should be free to come and go across borders;
to live and work where they choose.


But of course.


6. Businesses and farms should operate without govt.
subsidies.


Subsidies = theft
Theft is a no no.


7. People are better off with free trade than with tariffs.


Tarrif = theft.
see above


8. Minimum wage laws cause unemployment. Repeal them.


Employers should pay what they wish.


9. End taxes. Pay for services with user fees.


Just like the free market.


10. All foreign aid should be privately funded.


All people should control their lives, completely and be responsible for
their behavior, completely.

Now, which side of the aisle do I stand on?

Which side of WHAT aisle, goofball? I don't recall any
talk of an aisle. You've completely lost sight - no,
never saw to begin with - the point of the quiz. It
*figures* you'd think the dope bobby has it together...

(I'm painting you into a corner with a very narrow brush)

You don't even have a Magic Marker, goofball, let alone
a paint brush.

"Robert Sturgeon" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 06:24:42 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:

[snip]

Robert:

Despite your articulate, well-reasoned and factually supported posts,
you should recognize by now that our little Jonny is never wrong about
anything; he knows it all already and is, therefore, totally immune from
further learning or the persuasive powers of fact and reason.
Furthermore, his reflexive resort to childish name-calling is evidence
of his inability to engage in constructive or meaningful debate or
discussion. Isn't it obvious that he has a well-earned place in your
twit filter?

Jeff

Time for a candid admission, bobby: you simply don't
know what you're talking about on the issue. You know
NEITHER economics nor psychology; you were just running
your ignorant mouth.

Casting aspersions on another really doesn't win you any
debating points. Instead, you might consider explaining why
economists study consumer confidence, market sentiment, the
irrational exuberance that powers bubble markets, that sort
of thing - psychological aspects of economics that you
assure us economists don't care one whit about.

I do thank you for your rudeness, because it has prompted me
to do some more research into this matter. I did an Alta
Vista search using the key words: economics and psychology.
It returned 588,142 results. As might be expected from
reading your tirades, it is easy to find articles on the
differences between the two. But it is also easy to find
articles to the contrary. Heres one:

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/5-30-2002-19412.asp
[snip]

Jeff McCann wrote:
"Robert Sturgeon" wrote in message
...

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003 06:24:42 GMT, Jonathan Ball
wrote:


[snip]

Robert:

Despite your articulate, well-reasoned and factually supported posts,

They're not well reasoned at all, jeffy. He is
asserting that economics is a "subset" of psychology,
and it plainly isn't, as anyone who has ever studied
the field - hmmm...that lets YOU out, too - can attest.

Repeat after me: economists developing somewhat of an
interest in psychology no more makes economics a
"subset" of psychology, whose establishment as an
academic discipline economics PREDATES, than did
previously economists' interest in biology, political
science and criminology make the field a "subset" of
any of those.

Economics is not a "subset" of psychology. bobby is
wrong to assert it is, and you are a dope for agreeing
with him simply because you don't like me.

Do you have any idea of how easy that argument is to turn
around? "I understand economics, but you only think you
do." Not exactly overwhelming.

Well, for 34 years, I was paid to teach courses in economics. That
included judging whether others (my students) understood it.
Apparently someone thought I was qualified to do that.

Are you?

vince norris

vincent p. norris wrote:

Do you have any idea of how easy that argument is to turn
around? "I understand economics, but you only think you
do." Not exactly overwhelming.


Well, for 34 years, I was paid to teach courses in economics. That
included judging whether others (my students) understood it.
Apparently someone thought I was qualified to do that.

What's your take on bobby's basic point: that
economics is a "subset" of psychology?

I maintain it's crap. Economics issues were
*considered* by some philosophers before the emergence
of economics as a distinct academic discipline, and
some of those philosophers may well have thought about
human psychology as well. However, Smith, Ricardo,
Say, Marshall and others clearly were not studying
psychology, and then spun off into economics.

When I studied economics as an undergraduate and in
graduate school, consumer preference was taken as a
given, and the notion of utility was being abandoned.
One of my professors in grad school at UCLA, Armen
Alchian, demonstrated decades ago that downward sloping
demand curves can be obtained without considering
"utility" at all; all that is required is a diminishing
marginal rate of substitution between two goods, which
is what we observe in the real world.

Economics is not a "subset" of psychology.


Are you?

bobby, the person to whom you are replying, has by his
own admission read ONE economics textbook in his life.
It was a lower division intro book at that. He is
not qualified to talk about economics, either the
subject as it is currently taught and studied today, or
the history of it.

"Jonathan Ball" wrote
Don wrote:
WOW!
You took that poor boy to the woodshed, but good!

Uh...no; no, donny, he didn't do anything of the kind.

There ya go again, acting like a spoiled little child.
You just can't help it can you? LOL
Still waiting for your reply to my answers to your questions.....