Economic methodology debates

My colleague Rudi Bachmann has been keeping track of the debate over neoclassical economics in the popular press and in the various fora where economists write about such big picture issues. He has, as well, participated in the debate in his native Germany, to the point where labor economists in Germany now ask about him once they know I am from Michigan.

Some of the material is in German but much is not. My sense is that the debate is much livelier in Germany, where it includes a separate but related competition between an older generation that still includes a lot of institutional and heterodox economists who see the local profession slipping away from their control and a younger generation of economists who want to be part of the broader international profession and to use the formal methods, both theoretical and econometric, in which they have been trained.

And I am pretty impressed that Rudi can cite Feyerabend.