Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Economics/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Creating a navigation bar

Does anyone want to spend time and create a navigation bar for WP Economics? I'm talking about something like Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/nav. I'd preferred if it was kept simple and have as little links as possible to not confuse new participants. Gary King (talk) 15:22, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea, but I don't think WikiProject Economics is sufficiently developed to have a need for one. I think a navbar is a good goal, but we don't have things like departments, task forces, or guidelines (like WikiProject U.S. Roads has). I think we should develop these bits of infrastructure, and build a navbar to go with them. Then again, it sounds like you're thinking of something smaller scale. What kinds of links do you see on such a WikiProject Economics navbar? -FrankTobia (talk) 16:22, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to have basically the "Points of interest" links at the top of WP Economics, and then a link to the Participants. That's it for now, I believe. Gary King (talk) 16:30, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

A link to the what? Strangely your Participants wikilink is not showing up on the page. Wonder what that's about. I added the Points of Interest thing. I wouldn't mind seeing some more links to it, like a link to the main Economics article (which really serves as a portal to economics), and a Deletions link. Maybe even an Announcements link as well. I don't know how the thing works though, I just copied it. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 18:25, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

It's a good start, but I'd prefer to have a vertical bar instead of a horizontal one. A vertical one can run on the right side of the page and does not use up as much space, etc. It just generally looks really good on WikiProjects, in my opinion. One WikiProject that has a layout I really admire is Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games, which looks really awesome and clean. Gary King (talk) 18:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I strongly urge holding off on a nav bar until we have some work to show that we are to be taken seriously. I have another editor in mind (who will go unnamed) who got a project all heated up with lots of fancy bells and whistles and bulletins and whatnot, but his "project" had done nothing. Now he looks like a damn fool, and a lot of people know it. Let's demonstrate our work ethic before we put on our cape and tights. What do you think? Unschool (talk) 19:18, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I see what you mean, although I was aiming more for improving this WikiProject simultaneously while developing our first Featured Article. Also, I contacted a lot of people to check out the Featured Article drive, which seems to be going well; I'd like to improve the WikiProject to keep them interested and returning to WP:ECON. Gary King (talk) 19:27, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Sign up for announcements by watching the new Announcements page

I've created a page, which is transcluded on WP:ECON called 'announcements'. This can be watched separately from the project page for people who only want to be updated on major announcements rather than every minor discussion or change to WP:ECON. The announcements page is found at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Economics/Announcements; click here to watch the page. Gary King (talk) 18:18, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The Featured Article drive is now closed

I have now closed the Featured Article drive because a 24 hour period has passed without any new edits. The following are the results, sorted by percentage of Support votes:

• Adam Smith — (13/0; 100%)
• John Maynard Keynes — (5/1; 83%)
• Milton Friedman — (5/3; 63%)
• Business cycle — (1/4; 20%)
• Microeconomics — (1/6; 14%)
• Macroeconomics — (0/4; 0%)

I think this will make a great list of articles to focus on for at least a month or two, depending on how long it takes to get each article to FA status. It's quite obvious that most people want Adam Smith to be the first FAC that WikiProject Economics produces, so whoever has got the time to contribute towards that goal, please do so. I will begin immediately, and will contact the people that voted on that article to ask for their participation.

We should probably 'formalize' this a bit more by placing an announcement on the project page and inviting members to participate in the FAC. I'll do so if I've got time; otherwise, would someone care to take the lead and do all that? I'd like to move into a more FAC advisory role than a role encompassing the entire WikiProject, if that's alright with everyone; this means I would like to focus on the articles we get to FAC one-by-one, because I believe that this is the real reason why a WikiProject should exist—to improve the quality of articles rather than simply assessing new articles.

Regarding the actual work on Adam Smith, any discussions about improving the article should be made at the article's talk page, at Talk:Adam Smith. If anyone has any useful books or other sources, please feel free to make use of them. If you have any expertise on the subject, please by all means help out. Thanks! Gary King (talk) 16:42, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

economics question

Hola WP:ECON contributors, I've a RS/COI economics question I've yet to receive an answer for; normally my questions on wikiprojects get few answers, I'm hoping this will be the exception. I'm looking for an editor with knowledge of economics to address a question that I'm not sure of. An editor added part of the following, including a referral to his own work and I would rather someone with the appropriate knowledge give the OK than an ignorant one such as I. Could anyone give me an opinion on the following?

The imperfection of the labour market is sometimes graphically presented with a UV-curve, a hyperbolic or similarly shaped curve that shows a fixed relationship between the unemployment rate on one axis and the vacancy rate on the other. If the economy changes, the labour market will move along this curve. Factors that affect friction will shift the curve inwards or outwards. It is possible to derive this curve mathematically by aggregating (infinitely small) submarkets of the labour market, if it is assumed that these submarkets follow a probability distribution. Formulae have been derived for the normal distribution^[1][2] and the Weibull distribution;^[3] the latter has the hyperbolic UV-curve (U x V = c) as a special case.

^[1]P. Kooiman (1986), "Some empirical models for markets in disequilibrium", Ph.D. thesis, Erasmus University Rotterdam

^[2]Kooiman, P. (1985). "An empirical two market disequilibrium model for Dutch manufacturing". European Economic Review. 29 (3): 323–354. doi:10.1016/0014-2921(85)90044-3. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

^[3](1983), "A family of market transaction functions", Foundations of Empirical Economic Research 1983/1, Rotterdam: Netherlands Economic Institute

Specifically, do you see any problems with bold sections, the citation or the text it accompanies?

My apologies for the vagueness, I'm trying to get an opinion based purely on the sources. Also, does anyone know if this publication serve as a reference in addition to, or as a replacement? Thanks, WLU (talk) 16:11, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm unfamiliar with that area of economics, but I want to help, so here goes. First off, the source looks legitimate. At the very least it's a peer reviewed journal, so even if it's not like the best of the best, it's almost certainly reasonable. I would have to read the paper to see if the bold section fits in there, but I probably wouldn't understand it anyway. The concern I would have is that including the bold may violate WP:UNDUE, but I don't think that's the case: it's just another instance of deriving the labor market curve mathematically. For me, COI issues are only a big deal when they serve to enrich the contributor somehow, or "promote your interests". This looks more like one of those cases where a relative expert in the field is citing his own work because it's relevant, and he's in a good position to judge that. Your concerns are well-founded, and WP:COI is a rather nuanced guideline. Sorry I can't be of more help on the substance though. In closing, I say keep the bold section, it looks legit. -FrankTobia (talk) 02:26, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Just a thought: for the maths, you could ask at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 21:26, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

The curve indicatng the relationship between the employment unemployment rate and the vacancy rate is called the UV curve. Vacancy rate=vacacies/vacancies+employees; Vacancies=unfilled corporate job offers(labour shortages)=effective job offers-number of persons who found a job. UV Curve image

I don't understand why/how would move inward/outward or why/how it would be possible to aggregate infinitely small submarkets. I'd like to understand.

--Kiyarrllston 14:43, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

New Article

I just read an article in the WSJ and created an article about the theory described in it. I'm sure ya'll know more about it than I do, so I'll leave ya'll to edit it up to your satisfaction. It's Hauser's Law.---G.T.N. (talk) 11:37, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

This doesn't look like it's worth an article to me. On the face of it, it's an interesting but fuzzy idea. If you can find several discussions of the idea which clarify exactly what it is and how it relates to other things, then it might be worth an article. In any case, it's certainly not worth an article titled "Hauser's Law", because apparently that term was coined in the WSJ article you link to from May 20, 2008. There's even a [Blog entry at the Progress and Freedom Foundation] iin which the author says he calls it "Reynolds' Law after the economist who first noted it, Alan Reynolds". So, I think you should kill that page until there's something more solid.Cretog8 (talk) 23:58, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

It already redirects to another article that is very similar after some discussion this morning. Gary King (talk) 00:03, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi Gary--I'm newish to the wiki thing, so I might be missing something, but it looks like the article is just there. How does it redirect? Cretog8 (talk) 00:07, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, my mistake. It was redirected this morning, but someone recently undid the redirect so you are correct in assuming that it doesn't redirect. I have re-added the redirect again, per the discussion on the article's talk page. Gary King (talk) 00:16, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it ought to be redirected. The author stated that it was a direct contradiction of that law, and from what I can tell, they look very different. For now, why don't we just delete it? ---G.T.N. (talk) 00:36, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

If you want to delete it, then bring it to WP:AFD, or you can request a WP:CSD per author's request. Gary King (talk) 00:37, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

GTN, if you want it deleted a CSD would be best, just tag the page with {{db-author}}. Additionally, you can re-create it in your user space and try to improve it there, for however long you want, until eventually it's ready to be back in the encyclopedia. Leave a message on my talk page if you want help with this. -FrankTobia (talk) 02:15, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Most frequently viewed articles

I saw on the Mathematics project; they list the 500 most frequently viewed articles. I thought this was interesting and maybe this could be done for economics. Hawk8103 (talk) 23:00, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Some scripting is required. I can do it, but unfortunately, don't have the time because I'd like to focus on Adam Smith. Basically, someone needs to compare a list of all articles using this project's template and all articles on the stats page for the most visited articles on Wikipedia. Gary King (talk) 23:53, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

That looks really cool. I'm wondering how they manage it, maybe it's easy enough to adapt for Economics without much coding of our own. I think I'll drop them a message and see if they can help. -FrankTobia (talk) 00:10, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

True; if they have the script still, they should be able to change a few variables to adapt it for us. Gary King (talk) 00:18, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Did anything ever come from this? I would look into myself, but I am studying for my comprehensive exams so I only working on technical stuff related to my classes. Hawk8103 (talk) 14:44, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Business and Economics

Doesn't Wikipedia:WikiProject Business and Economics already cover WikiProject Economics issues? GregManninLB (talk) 07:45, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

The two are almost entirely separate, so Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics was started in an attempt to focus some work on economics.JQ (talk) 10:43, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

To play devil's advocate for a moment, though, I would say that both that project and this one are pretty inactive, just by looking at the talk page for each one. This is just a wild suggestion, but perhaps a merger of the two projects is in order? In my opinion, a larger but more active project is better than several smaller but less active projects. Certainly some overlap in people's interests exists over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Business and Economics, so if we were to invite some of them to work on Adam Smith then some would happily respond and help out?

I was also going through different WikiProjects to see how 'productive' they were by comparing the ratio of Featured Articles to total articles assessed by each project. I usually use Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games as my baseline because I visit it often. They have got 88 FAs out of 21189 articles in total, so 0.4% of their articles are FAs. Not bad, compared to the global average of 0.09% of all articles are FAs. For Wikipedia:WikiProject Business and Economics, it's 25 FAs of 15159, so that's 0.16% are FAs. When I looked further, though, so it's less than WP:VG but more than the global, which is expected. After further inspection, though, I realized that about 20% of all the Business FAs are featured Lists I created. Yikes. Gary King (talk) 14:45, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

(after ec)I don't think a merge is a good idea. I prefer the current setup for the following reasons:

• Goals, scope etc become more meaningful in focused projects.
• Working with people who have similar interests makes decisions easier and makes the project more efficient (but we can always go over to the Business project for help/advice/suggestions if we need it (as you've just done)).
• Easier to reach consensus.
• Easier to identify areas of inactivity (e.g. the B&E project may be very busy but no-one realises that the "B" section is inactive).
• Joint collaborations are possible where overlaps exist.
• Business and economics are very different disciplines and merging them for the sake of merging them doesn't make much sense.

As an example, the Investment project was recently started as a sub-project of the Finance project with very different objectives and those objectives would not have been met without the creation of Wikiproject:Investment. Perhaps we could have an over-arching "project" which serves as an umbrella for all Finance, Business etc topics where consensus can be established for stuff that affects all of the projects -- but such a "project" will be fully cognisant of the individual projects. Personally, I think that the inactivity is only a result of a lack of awareness among WP contributors. That's my 2c, FWIW. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 15:09, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd advance the thesis that the way these WikiProjects are organized is wrong, and that's what causes confusion. WP Economics should be the base one, to deal with major themes. Below it there should be roughly these three sub-WP's: "Microeconomics", "Macroeconomics", "Accounting and Finances", reflecting the real world division on the matter. "Business and Economics" would appear as a WP Microeconomics task force, and you could have a sister task force inside WP Macroeconomics with the name "Government and Economics". On top of that, each of these specific WPs could have its own set of task forces to deal with schools of thought, theories, biographies etc. Such a division of labor would makes things much easier and probably more productive. -- alexgieg (talk) 15:17, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I really like an umbrella idea. I'm thinking of a WikiProject Business with several subprojects. To be honest, I always like to think that WikiProjects should be a bit competitive so that we're always on the edge to created more Featured content, and WikiProject Videogames is kicking our butt right now! :) (Of course, I'm also active there every once in a while, so it's really a cannibalistic situation.) I'm all for whatever helps us streamline our work better.

What I think would be good is if there is only WikiProject Business, which defines some general things such as how to assess articles (these instructions do not need to be repeated for every project!), and then there are subprojects, such as at "Wikipedia:WikiProject Business/Economics" instead of an entirely separate project as it is now. I understand that Business and Economics are fairly different, but they share similar enough traits and interests that we need to take advantage of some glue to hold it all together. Also, I think that task forces setup like how WP:FILM or WP:VG does it would make sense under a WikiProject Business umbrella. Gary King (talk) 15:18, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that Business and Economics are almost identical subjects from the perspective of Microeconomics. For a macroeconomist they have almost no relation, except maybe in the sense that Economics is all about knowing how to regulate business, while Government and Economics are pretty well linked together. So, having a WP Business as the umbrella would be very non-NPOV, as much as having a WP Government as the umbrella would. The better thing is to keep this reversed, so that both micro and macroeconomists are happy. -- alexgieg (talk) 15:31, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm now curious to know if there are any projects that have a similar situation in that they cannot define exactly where one topic ends and another begins? WP:VG and WP:FILM, both projects I mentioned, have well-defined subprojects (video games have game genres, and films have movie genres), so they are fortunate in that respect. I don't know, but is WP:BUSINESS the largest project that finds itself in this situation? This would be an interesting precedent for other projects.

Regarding the argument you have brought forward, above, I'm by no means an economics expert, so I'll have to defer this to someone else who knows more about it than I do. Gary King (talk) 15:35, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

WP Philosophy has a lot of overlapping between its task forces. WP Religion is an umbrella for a lot of semi-independent WPs, all of them with task forces and their own semi-independent WPs. And on top of that, you have the fields of philosophy of religion (mostly inside WP Philosophy, but touching a lot in WP Religion) and religious philosophies (which go the other way around). It's lots of fun, as I'm a member in many of those. :-) -- alexgieg (talk) 15:55, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

(remove indent)Alexander, the trade-off between macro and micro economics can be discussed within the Economics sub-project of the umbrella. Personally, I think that Business deserves its own sub-project of the umbrella rather than squeezed in to a sub-project of Economics. Economics would have more of a penchant for theory while Business would be more practical and would probably take care of (amongst others) the articles dealing with companies. Finance would probably take care of corporate finance and quantitative/qualitative financial issues and Investment would take care of what it's doing at the moment (which is to make WP the provider of investment information to casual investors). There may be a few more but in the end we should end up with no more than six or so and everything would fall into one of them. I think it would be important that the hierachy be easily spottable by any newbie. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 15:53, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Zain, sounds good, I like that. Six or so is a good maximum number to have, and yes, I think the primary goal should be to make the whole hierarchy understandable to a newbie not familiar with the project. Gary King (talk) 16:00, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps there shouldn't be an umbrella, but rather two main WPs, Business (for everything business related, i.e., practical matters) and Economics (the academic science, i.e., theory), each one the umbrella for its own subjects. In other words, "Business and Economics" would be split, as something that doesn't make sense, much like an umbrella category "Mechanical Engineering and Physics" doesn't either. What doesn't mean that one wouldn't link to the other as a related WP. What do you think? -- alexgieg (talk) 16:03, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

That's also another possible option that I could live with. Gary King (talk) 16:05, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure - sounds reasonable but I think we'd have a problem because there are many articles that contain both theory and practice (such as Option (finance)). So we'd end up having joint collaborations almost everywhere and people might try to split up the articles which probably isn't the best thing. Something to think about, though - I'd look at it with an open mind if it turns out to be consensus.

Eventual article split ups would be discussed on each article's talk page, and would only happen if a consensus was reached. Besides, there are many articles that are worked on by different WPs. I've seen articles that are edited by six or more projects at the same time (or at least, that have that many WP banners in their talk pages), and it usually works well. So, I don't think this would really be a problem. -- alexgieg (talk) 16:40, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

As an aside, I think we should invite the folks from the other projects to contribute to this thread as they would all be affected if this goes through. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 16:14, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Reassessment

I would like Measures of national income and output to be reassessed. Is there a place where I can ask for this? Or is there none? (Bonzai273 (talk) 15:10, 31 May 2008 (UTC))

For now, this is a fine place. In the future I'd like to see Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics/Assessment become the place for this, but right now it's not active enough to justify. Presently, in my opinion, the article looks like it has been correctly assessed as B-class and mid-importance. I'm open to discussion to change my mind, and I'd like to ask others to look at the article and see what you would assess it as. Bonzai, feel free to ask about any specific issue you see with the assessment. Thanks. -FrankTobia (talk) 14:23, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Merge Proposal

I propose a merge with Wikipedia:WikiProject Business and Economics, mostly the same topic these two projects worry about. What do you think? figneakfsor —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.106.14.18 (talk) 00:49, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

See the above thread #14 (Wikipedia:WikiProject Business and Economics) in discussion. Morphh ^(talk) 3:37, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

JEL codes in article organization

Anyone have good guidelines on when/how/(whether?) to include JEL codes in articles? Cretog8 (talk) 03:10, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

JEL codes are apparently typically added to categories, at here. Gary King (talk) 04:05, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Urk, thanks. I don't have a good handle on categories yet, honestly. I'm wondering whether there should be explicit text in an article about related JEL codes, and if so, how it should be included. To me, it looks funny (see lede for Public choice theory), but I'm ignorant of standard practice (if there is standard practice).Cretog8 (talk) 04:12, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

It kind of does look funny, but I think it is good. Perhaps it would fit better under a separate section on "Research" where we can mention the major journals in the field. ImpIn | (t - c) 07:42, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think this type of information belongs in the article lead. I'd place it in the references section - perhaps above the first reference. Morphh ^(talk) 15:15, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal for the lists of basic topics

This project's subject has a page in the set of Lists of basic topics.

See the proposal at the Village pump to change the names of all those pages.

The Transhumanist 09:57, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Economic freedom

We're having a bit of a POV argument over at Economic freedom. Unfortunately, it seems that each side has only one significant participant, which makes the dynamics of consensus really tricky (at least for me). Fresh blood would be welcome. Cretog8 (talk) 21:15, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Budgetary System in India

Could someone from this project have a look at Budgetary System in India and see if you think it is salvageable as an article? At the moment its someone's Ph.d thesis and I'm tempted to put it up for deletion. -Hunting dog (talk) 17:22, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

My gut reaction was to contact the original article creator and see if he could provide us with sources. Then I started reading the article and came to the conclusion that, even with many inline citations, it would constitute flagrant original research. As an excerpt from an academic thesis paper, I don't see how we could make the article encyclopedic without massive amounts of work, bordering on a complete rewrite. I think deletion is the way to go, on account of it being blatant WP:OR and a possible copyright violation. You can do the honors. -FrankTobia (talk) 03:22, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Done Prod'ed, thanks for the second opinion. -Hunting dog (talk) 06:33, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Stagflation is mostly junk

Stagflation is a crucial topic nowadays, but the Wikipedia page is a badly-organized collection of bad explanations of good theories and bad explanations of bad theories, complete with exaggerations and POV rants. Help!!! --Rinconsoleao (talk) 12:31, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Yep, it's definitely a huge jumble right now. Perhaps some of it could be split off into separate articles? Gary King (talk) 07:57, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it's not so much a huge surplus of good material that needs to be divided up, as a huge surplus of incoherent and frequently repetitive discussion that needs to be deleted and/or consolidated. --Rinconsoleao (talk) 08:08, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Astroeconomics

This new article is setting off BS alert for me, does anyone here think this actually exists as described? The few ref's I can get access to for 'Astroeconomics' seem to describe it as related to Astrology not interstellar travel -Hunting dog (talk) 11:21, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Delete it. Whether Krugman wrote that article as a joke, or some joker managed to hang something on an old website of his, either way the whole thing is just for humor. --Rinconsoleao (talk) 12:29, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I thought the same thing when I resorted it last night but checking out the sources, it does appear to be a really study of thought, although tongue in cheek. I see no reason for deletion. --Patrick (talk) 12:54, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

If it involves valid reasoning, but is done only for purposes of amusement, then either it should be deleted as irrelevant, or Wikipedia should state that it is a kind of joke. What's most important for Wikipedia is not to mislead readers (and also to avoid getting a reputation for including misleading information... though maybe it's too late). --Rinconsoleao (talk) 13:28, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah finally found what must have been genesis for the article NYTimes blog by Krugman from around time of creation [1] so it appears it was him but definitely tongue in cheek. Have removed the text about "Astroeconomics" which in that context seems to be the invention of the Wikipedia author and moved to The Theory of Interstellar Trade. Think its now accurately portrayed but could have notability problems. I can take to AfD if you think it needs that (I saw earlier attempt at that didn't work due to some sort of template problem) -Hunting dog (talk) 13:44, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Good work. I think the page name change makes loads of sense, thanks for thinking about that. Cheers --Patrick (talk) 13:46, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I'm late to the discussion. I don't think it should be deleted as it's a pretty respectable-looking article right now. That said, notability seems a bit more difficult for this subject. I recall having read about it from an econ blog or two; I'll try to add content and references in the near term. -FrankTobia (talk) 16:24, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 21:58, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

New economics and finance stubs

Hi. There is currently a discussion on creating new economics and finance stubs. Currently, the main stub category has over 2000 stub. We welcome your input. Thanks --Patrick (talk) 18:06, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 950 articles are assigned to this project, of which 370, or 38.9%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 14 July 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. Subscribing is easy - just add a template to your project page. If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 18:41, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Sounds useful, but also, there is little point in continuing to generate cleanup lists when there aren't even enough people to help with the cleanup. We need to focus more on single articles instead of just putting a lot of articles under our wing but not doing anything about them. Gary King (talk) 18:43, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Doha Development Round

Hi all. I'm planning on working on the Doha Development Round article over this weekend since there might actually be a agreement soon. I would welcome the help if anyone cares to join. Thanks --Patrick (talk) 20:27, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Oooh, exciting. I added it to my watchlist and I'll try taking a fuller look sometime today. Vickser (talk) 20:34, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I added in some stuff about the issues pertaining to the round. I've been taking a fair amount from congressional research documents, which are in the public domain. I'll be adding some more in tomorrow fixing a few weak spots --Patrick (talk) 01:52, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

New stubs

Hi all. Some new stubs relating to economics have been created. If you come across any pages that have {{tl:econ-stub}}, consider replacing it with one of the following stubs, if it is a related page.

• {{international-trade-stub}}
• {{econ-policy-stub}}
• {{econ-theory-stub}}
• {{econ-problem-stub}}
• {{trade-stub}}

Thanks. --Patrick (talk) 21:34, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Stubs again

I've been sorting through many of the articles in Category:Economics and finance stubs. I've found that many of them do not have categories other than the stub category. Therefore I have been adding them to Category:Uncategorized stubs. Putting them in the correct categories is far from my expertise so I ask editors of this project to have a look through Category:Uncategorized stubs to try to categorise all the economics and finance stubs. More information on categories can be found at WP:CATEGORY. Thanks Severo^TC 20:57, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Template:Nobel icon proposed for deletion

A TfD has been convened, as to whether to prohibit all the little gold icons in Nobel prizewinners' infoboxes. Jheald (talk) 09:04, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Punctuation of block-displayed formulæ in economics articles

Over in “St. Petersburg paradox”, there is a dispute on whether block-displayed formulæ should be punctuated as are in-line formulæ. In other words, which (if either) is unacceptable:

Jones offer the model

$U\left(p,x\right)=p+x$,

which was rejected out of hand by Smith in favor of

$U\left(p,x\right)=p\cdot x$.

(having a comma and then a period after the formulæ) or

Jones offer the model

$U\left(p,x\right)=p+x$

which was rejected out of hand by Smith in favor of

$U\left(p,x\right)=p\cdot x$

(not having a comma or period). If you have an opinion or other constructive comment, then please make it at Talk:St. Petersburg paradox#Request for comments: punctuation after displayed formula. One thing that I believe would be helpful would be for people to informally skim a few econ journals or books that they have at hand, and report what practice(s) they find. —SlamDiego_←T 12:31, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Science driver

An alleged economics term that I've never heard before is at AfD. If anyone has heard of a "science driver", it'd be cool to hear you weigh in. Check it out: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Science driver. -FrankTobia (talk) 02:52, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

WTO navigation template

I posted this over at the WTO talk page, but I haven't received any comments. I've been thinking that it might be useful to create a navigation template for the WTO, something like the UN has. We have 46 pages in the category. The draft is at Template:WTO nav. I would appreciate any comments. Thanks. --Patrick (talk) 21:15, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

That looks great to me. II | (t - c) 21:28, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Me too. Remember (talk) 00:34, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Niiice. -FrankTobia (talk) 04:55, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I added it to the WTO pages already. --Patrick (talk) 05:40, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Welcome message for new members

I thought it would be useful to create a welcome message that we could post on new members pages. I drafted one at Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics/Outreach/Welcome. Let me know what you think. Cheers --Patrick (talk) 00:11, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

That's a fantastic idea. How would you feel about listing assessments as a thing to do? Right now the assessment page needs a walk-through and some sprucing up, but I'll get right on it if you think it'd be useful. Personally I think it would be nice to include (I've been looking for an excuse to kickstart the assessment department), but it's up to you. -FrankTobia (talk) 05:05, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Completely agree with you. What do you think the wording should be? --Patrick (talk) 05:09, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I invoked WP:BOLD and made some changes to the template. Feel free to change them however you see fit. I'm also working on adding some content to Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics/Assessment; a watchful eye there may prove helpful as well. -FrankTobia (talk) 18:35, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Economics

The Economics article is currently undergoing a rewrite. Any comments or help would be greatly appreciated. --Patrick (talk) 07:08, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

What kind of work are you planning? Like a complete rewrite? If it's anything huge I would suggest helping with the Adam Smith collaboration drive until we decide to end it, so that we can focus our efforts. But of course I don't want to mess with the invisible hand. I do think that Economics is a ripe target for a WP:ECON GA-drive in the coming weeks and months, and I'll watchlist it in the meanwhile. -FrankTobia (talk) 18:13, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

It is undergoing a rewrite whether we like it or not. :) Skip's doing on OK job I guess, but his work should be paid attention to -- he has a very strong interest in technocracy, which isn't really what we want on the economics page. I've been reading his changes. II | (t - c) 18:35, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Yep, what II said. Basically, I just wanted more eyes on the page to make sure that everyone is happy with the changes. --Patrick (talk) 20:46, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Excellent – the more help the merrier! That article definitely needs a rewrite and could benefit with the help of a few more people. Gary King (talk) 02:17, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I've added it to my watch list. Morphh ^(talk) 13:38, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

It appears to me that skip sievert is really not doing a good job. My level in English is a bit too poor for me to really help, but his actions somehow drive me to despair. MaCRoEco (talk) 01:08, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Maybe when you improve your English, then a bit, you can do a better job of explaining why. In the mean time... the article looks about 10 times better than the wreck it was. It was loaded with factual errors and in general appearance was ugly, poorly laid out... and confusing.skip sievert (talk) 01:15, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Economics importance assessments

Hey all, I've been working on Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics/Assessment so WP:ECON can have a meaningful baseline against which to assess articles. Notably I took a first stab at importance assessment criteria, but it sorely needs attention from other members. Specifically I want the WikiProject Economics community to vet the criteria for each level, and to come to a consensus on some example articles that definitely represent the levels. I'm ready to have my suggestions torn apart :) -FrankTobia (talk) 23:34, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

It looks great. I just added in Adam Smith into the top cat. --Patrick (talk) 01:53, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it looks good too. Great job! Gary King (talk) 02:17, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Nice! One thing I could suggest (from doing assessment with WikiProject Taxation) is to consider using the {{Grading scheme}} template instead of a custom quality table. Priority/Importance should be your own as it is specific to the WikiProject, but the quality of an article should be global. The custom table could become outdated and may not continue to reflect the standards or grading criteria for Wikipedia as a whole. Morphh ^(talk) 13:10, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see now that keeping it updated may prove problematic. Right now it's a subset of that template: I wanted to remove FA and GA for brevity. But I think you're right in the long run, and I'll replace that table with the template soon. -FrankTobia (talk) 14:50, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Economy of East Germany category

I stumbled upon this quite by accident. Most the articles are completely uncited/unreferenced eg New Course, Economic System of Socialism, New Economic System. I would love to help these interesting articles get WikiStandardised, but unfortunately I know nothing about economics. So I searched out you guys in the hope that one of you might like to show this area some TLC. Thank you for your time, almost-instinct 22:59, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I tagged them as being under the purview of WP:ECON and assessed them, and gave them a once-over. Not sure where to find sources for these and I don't have much time, but I have them watchlisted now if that counts for anything. Thanks for the heads up! -FrankTobia (talk) 01:02, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm wholly ignorant of these topics. From my ignorant perspective, it looks like they might benefit from a merger into a single article on "East German economic programs" or something? Cretog8 (talk) 03:12, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Economic Systems sidebar

There is heated debate over at the Economics article on the use of the Economic systems sidebar. My position in the debate has been that there's one over-riding reason that use of the sidebar on that page is inappropriate which is that the Economics article is not part of that series. Another editor strongly disagrees with that reasoning. I would be grateful if others can either authoritatively clarify this issue or add their own opinions. Cretog8 (talk) 21:09, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

WP:ECON/A test case: Hicksian demand function

Lately I have been working on getting WikiProject Econ's assessment department up and running by writing up some importance criteria and starting to apply them across the project. Of course, I came up with the criteria myself, so I'd like to start building a consensus that the criteria are any good (it can't be assumed I know exactly what I'm doing).

So here's a test case I'd like everyone to comment on: the Hicksian demand function article. Pdbailey and I have been discussing it on that talk page since I reassessed the article down from High importance to Mid importance. My argument is that only broad topics likely of interest to the general public should be High importance, whereas the subject of this article is of more specialist interest and thus should be ranked Mid. -FrankTobia (talk) 06:12, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

FYI- Tulip Mania is a FAC

You can check it out here [2]. Remember (talk) 12:41, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Assistance for dispute

I would like to request the assistance of editors that are very familiar with Wikipedia policy and have a background in economics. The FairTax article (FA) has been under dispute since it appeared on the front page of Wikipedia in July. We're running into Raul's law #5, and personally I'm pushing the corollary of #1. An editor has argued (and continues to argue) that the FairTax, a tax reform proposal in the U.S., and its economic research are WP:FRINGE and that a large amount of sourced material should be removed. It was posted on the fringe noticeboard and again here (7 editors stated it was not fringe and 3 stated it was - 2 of the 3 editors for fringe being new). The material is sourced in accordance with WP:V/WP:RS and it follows WP:NPOV policy. Removal of such content would thus violate NPOV policy by removing sourced and relevant viewpoints (which would and does apply to either side). The editor has violated 3RR^{22 July 2008} and WP:NPA^[3][4] (although I have not mentioned it until this point). Being the only editor there at the moment to discuss the content, it's an 1 vs 1 dispute and it's starting to get ugly. I am no doubt being stubborn with letting new users violate what I believe to be policy on an article I've worked very hard on (as I'm sure many of you that have moved an article to FA will know). I'd like to get some outside viewpoints. Here is the current dispute if you want to skip the history. We're moving up the dispute resolution tree and I thought this might be a good place to gather some input before going to mediation or arbitration. Thanks, Morphh ^(talk) 18:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

First off, FT is a great article. No wonder it got FA status. I read over the content dispute and it appears that the user clearly has a view to push. I added it my watchlist. I'm not quite ready to get fully into the dispute but I'll make sure that he discuss all removal of info. --Patrick (talk) 23:24, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

The sources could possibly still improve, but I imagine you've done the research and there isn't a whole lot of academic journal analysis? That's not to say that there aren't a lot of good, "unpublished" economics working papers. I just searched IDEAS for FairTax and only 4 papers come up.[[5] Kotlikoff is involved with all of them, and 3 of them are NBER working papers, which means they're somewhat vetted, I think. II | (t - c) 08:59, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Whenever a new study or a better sourced is published, we try to update the article to reflect the best sourcing possible and include the latest data. I'm sure some existing sources could be improved, but I'm just not sure that's the best use of our time on an article that has already reached a high quality level (I'd rather be bringing other articles to FA quality). What this editor is doing though is removing content based on his/her own opinion as to what are falsehoods, misrepresentations, or unsubstantiated statements without proper review. While peer-review research is highly sought, it is not basis of requirement for including content. The material is their point of view, which is properly sourced and attributed. I have not engaged in WP:POINT by removing critical content based on his same standards, which would completely strip the article. The editor has called the FairTax proponents extremists (although it is cosponsored by 17% of the House, had gained support of over half the Republican presidential candidates and one Democrat, and sold two NYT bestselling books). He compares this to creationism, suggesting supporters statements are fringe economics and should be removed if not supported by peer-review research. He lost the dispute in the Fringe Noticeboard but continues to delete content based on these arguments, and other sourcing claims. If you're for such a plan or not seems irrelevant, this is an extreme use of guidelines to push for content removal of a point of view. I hope more of you can engage in the conversation, as this is what we need. I'm willing to reach some compromises but some base of policy must be established as we are just about in threat mode. I don't want to edit war over this and would greatly appreciate some outside clear heads joinging in. Morphh ^(talk) 13:51, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Here's how I see the situation: you've already taken this issue to the fringe noticeboard, where the consensus was that his edits are without consensus. Still he keeps making these edits, and does not respond to reasoned arguments. It sounds like if this continues, it's only wasting everyone's time and increasing WikiStress beyond normal levels. So my suggestion is to bring it to mediation, or to WP:AN/I if it gets to that point. Some editors just can't be reasoned with. Hopefully it doesn't get to that point, but better not to throw good time after bad.

I did try to follow the discussion, but I didn't feel comfortable enough jumping in. I'll try again. -FrankTobia (talk) 16:15, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I've added the article to Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-08-19 FairTax. Perhaps this will move us to a point where we can better discuss specific content. Thanks Morphh ^(talk) 15:52, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

FYI - Mediation has started and there is an area for others to comment. Thanks Morphh ^(talk) 20:12, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Based on the moderators comments, we're clearly going to need some more people in this discussion. Morphh ^(talk) 22:40, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Adam Smith as father of economics-History of economic thought

Over at History of economic thought, we're having much the same argument as at Talk:Adam_Smith#Smith_as_father and Talk:Adam_Smith#Father_of_Economics.3F about whether Adam Smith is widely considered the father of economics. At the history article, there seems to be an impasse which could use more input. Cretog8 (talk) 02:51, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I say we just get rid of this character Adam Smith. If he isn't the father of economics then he clearly he is just some random lunatic who wrote about damn pins. I might as well tag the article as non-notable, fringe, and BLP since we have no proof that he could have fathered economics, he might have actually been the mother. Hopefully we can speedy delete this guy off wikipedia for good. --Patrick (talk) 04:27, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Heh. In any case, I haven't been making any headway toward resolving this spat. Skip's discussion on the three talk pages above looks like forum shopping. Since all of our well-intentioned responses haven't met with progress, I believe we should start thinking about some form of outside assistance. -FrankTobia (talk) 10:38, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

To me it seems simple, if you can't find reliable sources indicating that he's thought to be the father of economics then don't say so. Zain :Ebrahim (talk) 15:47, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

My point... also. Any one can say any thing... and if enough people repeat it, it may turn into an urban myth or simple disinformation... but that should not slide over as a source for an encyclopedia. Right?

The sentence as it stands puts Smith as a mythological Libertarian Ayn Rand minor deity which is pretty pathetic as to neutral phrasing, because it has been made then into a political dispute and not even an economics one, it is some kind of political argument being made. At least one of the people supposedly upset by rephrasing it slightly to make it understandable, is a self identified, what is referred to as a libertarian, which is dandy... but ... so it smacks really of Libertarian political bias, as it is now. That is not good for neutrality. Is it?

The statement about Smith is patent nonsense really. The article suffers because of it. He may have gotten at the way we think of political economy, but it is nonsense to say he is the father of economics... That would be the priest kings of Mesopotamia.... Now the sentence as is, is a classic of this type.

It is a content dispute because of poorly phrased material. That is all it is. Finally.. this is a term used to break down a certain style of writing that has no place when trying to explain a subject : Weasel words are small phrases attached to the beginning of a statement, such as "some argue that..." or "critics say...", etc.. A serious problem with weasel-worded statements, aside from their veracity, is that their implication is misleading or too vague to substantiate. One problem with weasel words is that they can imply a statement is true when it may be no truer than its inverse. For example, an editor might preface the statement "Montreal is the best city in the world" with a disclaimer: "some people say that Montreal is the best city in the world". This is true: some people do say that Montreal is the best city in the world. The problem is that the reverse is true as well (some people say Montreal is not the best city in the world, and some go further and say that it is the worst), and it is thus easy to write a misinformed, slanted article composed of nothing but 'facts' like these, using media to spread hearsay, personal opinion and propaganda. All it takes is for somebody to add "Critics have asserted that..." to a statement, and there is a danger that the casual reader will take their word for it.skip sievert (talk) 16:10, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Zain, I agree that it should be that simple, and to my understanding I found just such a reliable source, which is referenced. It's a published survey of the content of economics textbooks. As I posted over at Talk:History_of_economic_thought#Smith_.2F_father_.2Fetc: The Hoaas&Madigan article is a survey of "10 of the top-selling principles textbooks in the field". In the article (p.528) they say, "In general, the texts are quite ready to give Smith credit for being the father of economics...".

I expect Skip and I have said all that we have to say on this, but if that reference is inadequate for some reason, that can be considered. All the same, we're going into silly territory. Adam Smith is widely considered the father of economics, that's plain as day. It's not a ref for WP, but this search helps to make that clear for someone who isn't already aware of it. The question is then not a matter of whether we say it, but what's a good source. I've put in one source, I would be quite content if someone finds what they see as a better one. I'm not bothering to search for other sources because I don't think any source would be adequate to resolve this argument. CRETOG8(t/c) 17:12, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Just about any thing is better than what is there now... Example Smith was an 18th century Scottish moral philosopher, whose impulses led to (many of) our modern day theories; his work marks the breakthrough of an evolutionary approach which has progressively displaced the stationary Aristotelian view. http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/Smith.htm

No weasel words there and I can easily make the citation and put that into the article instead of the misbegotten current sentence which is not really saying much of any thing that is accurate or true. It appears that a weasel words sticker may have to be put on the sentence now used.skip sievert (talk) 17:16, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Adam Smith for a rebuttal. -FrankTobia (talk) 02:40, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Frequently viewed articles

In case you didn't see the announcement, we now have a list of Frequently viewed articles. It is one of the most interesting things I've seen in awhile and a great way to focus our efforts to improve econ related articles. --Patrick (talk) 16:30, August 18, 2008 (UTC)

Cool - this should definitely be considered as part of the priority assessment. Morphh ^(talk) 14:41, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Economics in practice

This section (Economics in practice) of the Economics article needs attention. It could use an overall direction and flow of information... formatting etc. The economics article is at the point of almost looking good right now except for a few things. Could you all take a hard look at that section? skip sievert (talk) 15:57, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to Imperfectly Informed who does not say a lot but just redid the section area in question to really good results.skip sievert (talk) 16:24, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps a Barnstar is in order. Morphh ^(talk) 16:34, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

publications

List of scholarly journals in economics all need the banner added... go to town. Pdbailey (talk) 22:57, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I make a motion that the default importance be Low; that is, only rate it higher if there's some compelling reason. Discuss on WT:ECON/A if there's ambiguity. -FrankTobia (talk) 00:32, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I would agree, but doubt there are articles with importance above low. Even the most important publications are not necessary for a great encyclopedia. Pdbailey (talk) 12:25, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Policy Laundering and the WTO

There is currently a discussion taking place at World Trade Organization on whether a sentence should be put in the article on Policy Laundering. I don't believe that the sources provided have really made the case for inclusion. It would be useful to have more people involved in the conversation. Thanks --Patrick (talk) 21:22, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Economics sidebar

Over at the Economics article, there has been some demand for a sidebar to liven up the lead. I have copied the sidebar from Sociology to Template:Economics_sidebar as a starting point. I consider this experimental, since I'm not sure such a sidebar is a great approach, but it's probably worth the experiment. I strongly suggest that we try to achieve consensus on the sidebar itself before we start using it in articles, because I foresee a replication of many of the debates which have occurred in articles recurring in regards to the sidebar. It's also not clear whether there's agreement on what the sidebar should be (should it be designed specifically for that one article or for economics articles in general). CRETOG8(t/c) 23:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Additional comments from the project members would be great. I think we have a good start but would like to gain some consensus on what to include and how to best organize it. The discussion is taking place on the Template talk and the Economics talk. At some point here, we may just be bold and start applying the template. Issues will work themselves out. :-) Thanks Morphh ^(talk) 21:05, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

We've taken the next step with the sidebar and over the weekend have applied it to many of the articles listed on it. There are still a couple outstanding discussions: Should we remove "Part of a series on"?, Should we removed the portal link?, Should we modify "Categories and links"? :-) Please let your thoughts be known - inclusion / removal of the portal link seems to be the biggest issue at this point. While we may want to give it a couple more days to work out discussion points, feel free to apply it to the economics articles you think would be appropriate. Morphh ^(talk) 12:39, 02 September 2008 (UTC)

Some comments are requested in the section Template_talk:Economics_sidebar#.22General_classifications.22.3F. We'd like some opinion on the addition of General classification at the top of the sidebar, which links to the JEL classification. Right now it duplicates "Fields and subfields", which also links to the classification. Morphh ^(talk) 12:29, 05 October 2008 (UTC)

Changes to a relatively high traffic picture

I just wanted to let people know in a central location that I changed Image:AdamSmith.jpg recently. The previous image showed Smith facing the reader's left. The "new" image shows the original alignment and of the profile. I would not have changed the image around just to "correct" the orientation (I'm also aware that the MOS suggests aligning the eyes to face the text) but the reason the image is facing right is important for historical purposes. It turns out that Smith very rarely sat for pictures (a long process before cameras and film) and one of the only portraits 'drawn from life' of smith was an enamel paste medallion of Smith in right facing profile (evidently the artist--James Tassie--could work without requiring Smith's full attention). Most following profiles and sculptures were made using the medallion as a model, not Smith. The references for this are cited in this revision of the Adam Smith wikipedia page. Each reference is fully web available and searchable. If people want to fix my messes by copping or adjusting the image so it fits infoboxes like the last one did, please do so. I would ask that you not reverse the image without some consensus to do so. (unless you are going to do so as part of WP:BRD). Protonk (talk) 04:52, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I was all ready to show off my awesome image editing skills by flipping it over the vertical axis. At the same time, I do think we should try to have the eyes facing the text as much as we can (like in some of the pictures below). But I'll take this to Talk:Adam Smith once it bothers me enough. -FrankTobia (talk) 03:55, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

biography infoboxes

Some economist articles are using Template:Infobox economist (such as Thomas Malthus and Robert Higgs), and some are using Template:Infobox_Scientist (such as Robert Mundell), and then I guess some are using Template:Infobox Philosopher (such as Adam Smith).

My little mind's hobgoblin is raising a ruckus. It probably doesn't really matter, but I'd feel more content if there was a consistent choice (accepting there might be exceptions where an economist is also well-known as an economist a philosopher in general). The Template:Infobox economist seems weird to me for many economists, particularly living ones, just due to the History of economics link up top.

Any preferences for a standard choice? CRETOG8(t/c) 21:16, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I think I like the economist infobox the least. I prefer the Scientist infobox slightly over the Philosopher infobox. The Scientist infobox has more fields and I just like the presentation better. I do like the show/hide in the Philospher infobox with the influances and influanced. Morphh ^(talk) 1:13, 03 September 2008 (UTC)

Natural resource economics

This has pretty much gone from a stub to a more developed article today. More information is needed in the body of this article (Areas of discussion) Natural resource economics... Referenced and cited information especially. skip sievert (talk) 01:57, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Is there a reason why does that article not cite Hotelling's paper on use of exhaustible resources? I would probably put that in there. Protonk (talk) 02:37, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Please do.. it can use all the help it can get. No doubt that paper is something used or studied and connected. Right now the information is a general guide to the study... some of the main points.. but needs finer points and incidentals. skip sievert (talk) 15:52, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

there is a link. And if the article doesn't cite that paper, it doesn't really cover the main points...at least as an economics article. Protonk (talk) 16:25, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Added this so far... still needs more help with citations and references though:

Hotelling's rule is a 1931 economic model of non-renewable resource management by Harold Hotelling. It shows that efficient exploitation of a nonrenewable and nonaugmentable resource would, under otherwise stable economic conditions, lead to a depletion of the resource. The rule states that this would lead to a net price or "Hotelling rent" for it that rose annually at a rate equal to the rate of interest, reflecting the increasing scarcity of the resource.

The Hartwick's rule provides an important result about the sustainability of welfare in an economy that uses non-renewable resources.

See also: World3, Low-carbon economy, and Hubbert's peak

End skip sievert (talk) 18:38, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Business Cycle needs to be fixed

The article on Business Cycles is a mess. It really needs to be fixed ASAP. If anyone has an hour or two, could they clean it up a little. Thanks, much appreciated. lk (talk) 15:30, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions

Should Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions be in this project? It's technically just a math topic, but since it's a basic tool for optimization, it's also a part of most economist's education. CRETOG8(t/c) 16:03, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Earlier today I was asking myself the same question about Lagrangian multiplier. I decided that for topics which are entirely math topics, which are useful to other disciplines, that we shouldn't include it in WP:ECON. Maybe an exception should be if the article has or should have a subsection on economics topics? I dunno, but my gut reaction is let math be math. -FrankTobia (talk) 23:36, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Natural capital

I found this article which does not seem to be categorized and it was a total odd looking mess yesterday. I tracked down what it is about and added sections and information to it. Natural capital It still is just mostly thrown together information .. but I tried to organize it as to topic .. subject.. etc. Check out the page history.... It has not been edited very many times.. and try to figure out where this information should be categorized... so other people can find it or work on it. It might be a good idea to take a look at the edits previous to my working on it... I was surprised to see that such a mess was even there. As near as I can tell this is an economic article... probably more connected with ecological economics... than environmental economics. Classification? Ideas? skip sievert (talk) 15:53, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Input requested regarding Austrian School

Please see WP:ANI#Sockpuppetry and POV-pushing on Austrian School and related topics. Thank you. — Satori Son 21:18, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

This is a problem for WP:Economics, though not an easy one to fix. Thanks to the enthusiasm of some Austrian school fans, we have very extensive coverage of relatively obscure Austrian economists and ideas, while much more notable mainstream economists and theoretical contributions are omitted or inadequately covered. As an Inclusionist I wouldn't want to see these articles deleted, but it does produce a rather unbalanced picture.JQ (talk) 08:18, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

It is tricky. I'm not so much of an inclusionist. While I wouldn't want to see the articles removed, I'm concerned with the prominence of the Austrians in general economics articles. Pretty randomly, here's two examples. First, compare the "what links here" for Robert Lucas and for Murray Rothbard. It's quite a discrepancy. Second I noticed that one of the articles that linked to Rothbard was Economics (textbook). I was surprised, so I checked it out, and three of the external links are to mises.org, including a review by Rothbard, a comparison of Samuelson's textbook to Rothbard's, and a "continuing legacy" long-after-the-fact review that includes a good bit of Rothbard. That's weird. As for the Austrian school in general, I'm agnostic, because frankly even after reading the article I don't get it and I've never been much of one to categorize things into "schools of thought". I'm pretty confident that Murray Rothbard is not a prominent economist outside Austrian/libertarian circles.

Does this mean that folks have been slacking in filling in mainstream material or that Austrians have been over-enthusiastic? CRETOG8(t/c) 08:56, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

A bit of both, I'd say. I removed the external links from Economics (textbook), which were clearly inappropriate. OTOH, I don't see any value in deleting biographical articles, and if they err on the side of generosity, that's better than the opposite.JQ (talk) 10:11, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

• Jiminy Cricket! Look at Business cycle! I mean, granted, the Austrians school is kind of famous for their interpretation of cycles (Mostly because, at the time, they and the Marxists had the only two coherent theory that explained them without resorting to pixie dust), but in that article there is "the austrian view" and "everyone else's". Geez. Protonk (talk) 14:18, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Business cycle is a mess, and needs to be cleaned up. There is some good stuff in RBC that can be incorporated. lk (talk) 20:55, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

The trouble with the Austrian school editors here is not that there are too many biographies of Austrian economists. The trouble is that they want to have the 'Austrian viewpoint' prominently and favorably displayed on many mainstream economics topics. And they are very pushy about it. I just walked into an edit war on Inflation last week. It would be helpful if the project members could visit this page and leave some comments about how much weight the 'Austrian viewpoint' should have in Econ Wikiproject pages like Inflation and Business cycles. lk (talk) 20:55, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Satori, thanks for beginning this discussion. The most frustrating part of this is that battling the Austrian creep (capitalize if you prefer, although it would be plural) in articles is that it is taking a tremendous amount of time from doing productive editing. I wish there were a better way.--Gregalton (talk) 02:16, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

During Congressional hearings on monetary policy before the Committee on Financial Services in 2000, Alan Greenspan, at the time chairman of the Federal Reserve, when asked about the view of the Austrian school on inflation and business cycles said the following: "I will be glad to give you a long academic discussion on the Austrian school and its implications with respect to modern views of how the economy works having actually attended a seminar of Ludwig Mises, when he was probably 90, and I was a very small fraction of that. So I was aware of a great deal of what those teachings were, and a lot of them still are right. There is no question that they have been absorbed into the general view of the academic profession in many different ways, and you can see a goodly part of the teachings of the Austrian school in many of the academic materials that come out in today's various journals, even though they are rarely, if ever, discussed in those terms. [...] So all I can say is that the long tentacles, you might say, of the Austrian school have reached far into the future from when most of them practiced and have had a profound and, in my judgment, probably an irreversible effect on how most mainstream economists think in this country." [6] -- Vision Thing -- 07:56, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Most would agree that aspects of the Austrian school teachings have indeed been incorporated into mainstream economics. One can't, however, hide behind the shield of a loose "school" name association when there are several distinct generations and representatives of various levels of credibility. To put it another way, the credible parts were absorbed into mainstream economics generations ago, and no-one identifies it that strongly with Austrian school. What's left are other bits. So, I would argue what we have are marginal theories and approaches being pushed using the Shibboleth of the "Austrian school." This is what the discussion is about - precisely those parts that have not been incorporated into mainstream economics (i.e. the Austrian school as distinct from mainstream economics).

As for Greenspan's commentary: you left out the question and who was posing it (Ron Paul). The question was "And my question dealing with this is, where do the Austrian economists go wrong? And where do you criticize them and say that we can't accept anything that they say?". Greenspan carefully avoids the question and makes nice noises about some Austrians. It's not politic for Fed chairman to be more, ahem, robust in their responses.--Gregalton (talk) 09:09, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

The problem can be seen pretty clearly in Inflation. The "Austrian" view is essentially just the quantity theory, put forward in a dogmatic fashion and with a lot of rhetoric about (a) the evils of governments and central banks and (b) the importance of saying the word "Austrian" as often as possible. As Gregalton says, the important insights of Hayek and others are mainstream and what remains is the shibboleth of the "Austrian school." This is, in fact, pretty much true of the surviving remnants of Institutionalism, but that doesn't seem to cause such a problem here. JQ (talk) 11:59, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

You are talking about "mainstream economics" like something solid and unified. That is not the case. Within mainstream economics there are different currents and views on the same subjects. Greenspan clearly identifies the Austrian School as one of the schools whose opinion matter, and if you are not Bernanke in disguise I don't think that your opinion matters more than his when it comes to monetary policy, inflation and business cycles. -- Vision Thing -- 13:15, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Besides the issues of politesse which Gregalton mentioned, Greenspan spoke of the Austrian school in a historical sense, "its implications with respect to modern views", "what those teachings were". He then says (without any specifics) that the good bits have been absorbed. It doesn't sound as if Greenspan thinks listening to modern Austrians has any benefit where they disagree with mainstream economics. As for "mainstream economics", it's a shorthand. People within mainstream economics can disagree with each other on many things, while still acknowledging that different sides of the disagreement are still mainstream. CRETOG8(t/c) 15:51, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Who is considered "modern Austrian" and who "old Austrian"? Greenspan mentions Ludwig Mises by name, so he can't be in the category of modern Austrians. I guess that giving prominence to Friedrich Hayek also shouldn't pose a problem? -- Vision Thing -- 16:16, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I think we should concentrate this discussion in one place. That place might as well be here. If other project members get tired of seeing too much debate, perhaps we could move to a sub-page. To reference places where the debate has already been occurring, there is quite a bit at Talk:Inflation, some at Fringe noticeboard, and some at Talk:Monetary_inflation. (If there are others I've missed, please add them.)

It would be good if we can clarify exactly what we want to figure out. Broadly speaking, the question is, "Is Austrianism fringe economics?" Unfortunately, it seems like that question itself might be too vague because there's argument about what qualifies as Austrianism. What we really want to decide is when and how Austrianism should come up in economics articles, and when it doesn't belong. "Fringe" is also a stronger term than "minority". WP:Fringe implies that the view should be mostly ignored in most articles, while minority implies it should get a brief mention and explanation. So far, it looks to me like there's agreement that:

• The Austrian School is relevant historically, and so there shouldn't be a problem including it in "history of" bits. (As long as "history of" bits don't become overblown in places they're not appropriate, or cause confusion.)
• At least one Austrian economist--Friedrich Hayek--is clearly not fringe (regardless of whether some of his ideas are).
• Some ideas of the Austrians have become part of the mainstream.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of agreement beyond that.

If Austrianism is a moving target, we might have to narrow our focus to certain things. Would it be worth identifying specific fringe (or minority view) economists and ideas of the Austrian school? CRETOG8(t/c) 16:52, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

• It isn't fringe like "the Large Hadron collider is going to blow the world up", but is doesn't represent mainstream views of economics. Depicted as it is: a school which cropped up in the 19th century as a foil to both classical economics and marxism and saw a resurgence in Hayek's criticisms of socialism, it is fine. We can talk about the connections between the austrian school and historicism, but it doesn't make any sense to permit what is going on right now. Two major things are happening: one, on subjects of theory, the austrian viewpoint is presented primarily and uncritically. Two, standing articles and biographies are being subjected to criticism from the austrian standpoint as though that criticism is mainstream. Take the recent bit over Adam Smith. criticism of smith (while partly valid) is being inserted from the POV of an austrian school historian and presented as mainstream. That's nowhere near as bad as some cases, but it is an example.
• I think this is happening because there is a LOT of content about the austrian school online and not so much (at first glance) for more mainstream economics. Also, since part of the austrian school is a skepticism of mathematics, people interested in economics but turned off by the math (which appears rather early and gets pretty complex) find it easier to sympathize with the view that modern economics is "too mathematical", so the austrian viewpoint seems pretty logical (from that point of view).
• the right way to deal with this is to break it down into elements. Historicism can be treated well in some sense. Hayek (and his excellent criticism of social planning) can be treated well in another sense. I'm not so sure that the Austrian theories on monetary policy should be given a whole lot of present weight, but that is something that will have to be determined by selection of sources. A big problem with this issue is that the easy "mainstream" sources--Economics textbooks are notoriously ahistorical. Most econ textbooks proceed from what they sell as "first principles", and mention only briefly some antecedents. Histories of economic thought are tough to find for the level of detail we are looking at, especially recent histories which connect past trends and schools to current practice. What would be a good example (although it is VERY dated) is Schumpeter's history of economic analysis, but Schumpeter is pretty friendly to the austrian school. Thoughts? Protonk (talk) 17:22, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Very well put Protonk. I think we can deal with 'Austrian' POV pushing by aggressively insisting on reliable sources that are not self-published. Since 'Austrians' are seldom published by anyone expect their own journals and magazines, most of their writings are self-published, and are not reliable sources for anything except to verify what they say. lk (talk) 17:36, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Austrians are published in virtually all of the mainstream journals. Take a look at Walter Block's cv. DickClarkMises (talk) 13:22, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

We've got to be careful there, as plenty of Austrian school economic historians are published in popular press books or have histories of the discipline published. We could probably treat this like modern Marxian economists. They exist, and are published in "reliable" channels (as strictly defined by WP:RS), but no one outside of the Marxists seriously believes their explanations for phenomena. Protonk (talk) 17:39, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

True but even that can be explioted. WP:RS does not distinguish between peer-reviewed journals that are never referenced in mainstream journals and then mainstream journals. As long as the editorial board does not include the author of the article and the journal is peer-reviewed it passes WP:RS and WP:SPS. Hence the undue amount of articles about pet theories such as binary economics. EconomicsGuy (talk) 17:45, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Right. That's why WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE are the guiding lights here. We can't get into that RS debate at all because it will just turn into a cycle of "No, it isn't reliable because no one outside of that little circle ever cites it" and "ZOMG, are you telling me that a peer reviewed journal isn't reliable"? My head hurts just thinking about that debate. Protonk (talk) 17:49, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

You're right, we have to go with guidelines WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE. I think we can establish that Austrian economics is 'fringe', since:

1. 'Austrians' are almost never published anywhere except in their own journals.
2. There are few (if any) self-identified 'Austrians' who are tenured faculty in the Economics dept of an accredited university.
3. Their theories are not taught in the undergraduate economics programs of any accredited university.

By that criteria, Marxian economists probably qualify as less fringe. Therefore, according to WP:NPV, the Austrian viewpoint should receive less weight than Marxian economics. Not that I want to see Marxian economics anywhere, mind you ;) lk (talk) 18:18, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Leaving aside the fact that you have no evidence for your claims, can you please quote relevant parts of WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE by which you established this criteria? To me it looks like it is totally unfounded in Wikipedia's policies. -- Vision Thing -- 18:36, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, at least the first and third of those claims are simply false.

• The typical publication by the typical Austrian School economist isn't labelled “Austrian”, just as the typical Chicago School publication doesn't contain “Chicago School” in its title or body.
• I'm not aware of an Austrian School programme at an accreditted university, but most accreditted universities also don't have a corresponding programme for any other school, and there are certainly Austrian School economists at accreditted universities teaching courses from an Austrian School perspective.

Now, as to your second claim, I'd have to know what you meant by “few” and “self-identified”. Certainly, academic economists are not in the habit of wearing arm-bands. —SlamDiego_←T 16:58, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I think WP:UNDUE is pretty clear on this issue. The Austrian school viewpoint is at worst case a viewpoint held by a significant minority, because it is easy to name prominent adherents. At best case it is a part of the mainstream viewpoint, but that should be established on a case by case basis, by properly referencing those views. -- Vision Thing -- 18:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Eh. Let's distinguish a few things. The "Austrian School" of economics is not a monolithic entity. There is a large political component that creates most of the influence. The political view of the state as an enemy of free exchange is pretty popular among notable 20th century economists (Post Hicks/Keynes) and many central bankers. The economic views of the austrian school are separate from those political views and don't really commonly reflect practice in the discipline. It hurts us to grant significance to a technical school of thought based on the shared politics of its adherents. Protonk (talk) 18:55, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Where are these "mainstream" Austrians being published? Do you have any recent examples of peer reviewed articles in mainstream journals? Should be a simple question to answer without relying on WP:RS's broken definition of a reliable peer reviewed source. EconomicsGuy (talk) 19:01, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't follow journals. According to this list (it was first Google result for "economic journals") of economic journals there are three journals dedicated to the Austrian school (Austrian Economics Newsletter, Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, and Review of Austrian Economics). -- Vision Thing -- 20:13, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard details these guidelines for what is fringe:

• Obvious pseudoscience: Theories which are obviously bogus ....
• Generally considered pseudoscience: Theories which have a following, such as astrology, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community ....
• Questionable science: Theories which have a substantial following, such as psychoanalysis, but which some critics allege to be pseudoscience, may contain information to that effect, but generally should not be so characterized.

The Austrian school is at best Questionable science, as it is not as well established as psychoanalysis, their benchmark case. This makes Austrian economics 'fringe'. As for the weight Austrian views should receive in mainstream articles, WP:UNDUE states that it should be in proportion to their prominence in reliable sources. Since Marxian economics is more prominent in peer-reviewed journals based in universities, and university textbooks, it is obvious that Austrian views should receive less weight than Marxian economics. lk (talk) 19:38, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

You are still presenting your opinion as a fact. Can you provide sources which criticize the Austrian school as a pseudoscience? -- Vision Thing -- 20:14, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Does Tyler Cowen count as an Austrian at an accredited university? He certainly has associations with Austrianism, haven't found that he identifies himself as such. CRETOG8(t/c) 19:41, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Tyler Cowen does not self-identify as an Austrian economist, and he has stated that he does not believe in Austrian theory. For example, see here [7]. lk (talk) 19:54, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Peter J. Boettke is economics professor at George Mason University [8] where he holds the course on Austrian Theory of the Market Process [9]. Israel Kirzner is economics professor at New York University [10]. There are also some other economics professors listed at Society for the Development of Austrian Economics.-- Vision Thing -- 20:19, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Visionthing: you asked for a source. Krugman on Austrian economics. "the "Austrian theory" of the business cycle—a theory that I regard as being about as worthy of serious study as the phlogiston theory of fire."--Gregalton (talk) 20:20, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

He is talking about Friedrich Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter. If he was talking about someone else his comment might even be worthy of consideration. However, since his target are two economists for whom anyone can find a plenitude of sources to defend their views on business cycles I don't think Krugman helps your cause. -- Vision Thing -- 20:41, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Part of a reason why Hayek received a Nobel Prize was his contribution to the theory of money and business cycles. From The Royal Swedish Academy of Science's press release:

"Particularly, his theory of business cycles and his conception of the effects of monetary and credit policies attracted attention and evoked animated discussion. He tried to penetrate more deeply into the business cycle mechanism than was usual at that time. Perhaps, partly due to this more profound analysis, he was one of the few economists who gave warning of the possibility of a major economic crisis before the great crash came in the autumn of 1929.

von Hayek showed how monetary expansion, accompanied by lending which exceeded the rate of voluntary saving, could lead to a misallocation of resources, particularly affecting the structure of capital. This type of business cycle theory with links to monetary expansion has fundamental features in common with the postwar monetary discussion." [11] -- Vision Thing -- 22:10, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

The Austrian school was historically significant. But currently, as Vision Thing shows, only a tiny minority of academic economists identify as Austrian. Since Kirzner retired, Boettke would be about the most prominent. He's a respectable academic at a good, though not top-rate school, but his influence is negligible. As far as the mainstream view is concerned, whatever was useful in Hayek (and to much lesser extent von Mises) has been absorbed, and the rest is in-group posturing. This situation is comparable to a lot of the schools that flourished in the first half of C20 or so (institutionalist, Sraffian, historical and so on) - there are a few people hanging on, and talking a lot about history of thought, but very little new work that anyone outside the group pays any attention to.JQ (talk) 22:27, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

VisionThing, you misrepresent what Krugman says. He is referring to current Austrian theory, when he says "as worthy of serious study as the phlogiston theory of fire". He uses Hayek and Schumpeter's response to the Great Depression as an example of how Austrian ideas can do real harm. lk (talk) 04:56, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

No, he is not referring to "current" Austrian business cycle theory. When taking about recessions and booms he mentions two "Austrian theorists" by name - Friedrich von Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter. -- Vision Thing -- 06:53, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

You are both right in a sense: he is referring to the theory (esp "Austrian theory" = phlogiston), and he specifically criticizes both Hayek and Schumpeter: "Except for that last bit about the virtues of recessions, this is not a bad story about investment cycles." This doesn't contradict the Nobel statement, which says Hayek thought about the effects and saw it coming; Krugman says their proposed solutions, however, contributed to the problem.

And the "hangover theory", the general worldview Krugman attributes to the (modern) Austrian school, comes in for particular criticism as a policy approach, a quasi-moral/normative asceticism that is "intellectually incoherent."

And the Nobel statement you cited pretty much says (in this area) Hayek animated discussion, not that his resolution of the issue or policy prescriptions were correct. The Nobel statement is far more specific and clear on the Socialist Calculation debate: "The Academy is of the opinion that von Hayek's analysis of the functional efficiency of different economic systems is one of his most significant contributions to economic research in the broader sense." The whole statement is exceptionally careful in terms of what it identifies as the reason for the award: "in addition to their contributions to central economic theory", (Myrdal and Hayek) "carried out important interdisciplinary research so successfully that their combined contributions should be awarded the Prize for Economic Science." This can be debated, but it is nowhere near the wholesale stamp of approval of Austrian economics or business cycle theory that you imply.

Reminds me of the Greenspan quote you put above: specifically avoids criticism (because it's not the place for it), while recognizing substantive contributions.--Gregalton (talk) 08:20, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

right. We should be clear to say that elements of the austrian school, especially those proposed by prominent members have a significant historical impact and may have some limited impact in the present day. I don't want to throw out The Use of Knowledge in Society, one of my favorite papers on econ in the 20th century. Nor do I want to say that all business cycles are the result of mathematical or mechanical processes. But the explanation offered constantly and stridently by the austrian school is...incoherent, moralist, and really not that relevant to current research. Protonk (talk) 14:18, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

We are getting side-tracked. I stand by my assertion:

• Marxian economics is more prominent in university-based peer-reviewed journals, in university published books, and in university-level textbooks. Therefore, according to WP:UNDUE Austrian viewpoints should receive less weight than Marxian economics.

Personally, I would prefer not to see Marxian economics either, but they deserve more coverage than Austrian economics. lk (talk) 10:36, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

• also, we can start looking at past issues of core journals in economics and see how far back we have to go before we find something talking about the austrian school...hmm, I wonder if someone has already done that... Protonk (talk) 14:18, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

This discussion didn't seem, and hasn't proved, at all promising. Nonetheless, I'm going to throw in a few comments here:

• From its third generation onward, the Austrian School has always punched above its weight (measured by population and professional standing) in any forum in which it is not actively censored. It's going to punch above its weight on Wikipedia because the censorship mechanisms here are too weak to keep it from doing so.
• Unless one believes that Wikipedia should be censored in order to actively suppress understanding of some things, there aren't too many articles on Austrian School stuff; rather, there simply isn't enough treatment of other schools.
• The intent of WP:UNDUE wasn't to delete articles or reduce articles or sections to stubs because of the inadequacy of other sections or articles. (And, if that had been the intent, then its logical expression at this point would be a wiping of the Wikipedia.)
• Enthusiasts of the Austrian School tend to have a greater interest in the history of economic thought than do typical economists. And, while the understanding of that history on the part of the typical Austrian School enthusiast is rather weak, it is nonetheless stronger than that of the typical economist. This lack of competence and interest handicaps the presentation of mainstream economics on Wikipedia. (It's also real source of deficiencies in mainstream economics “out there”.)

—SlamDiego_←T 14:49, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

The ongoing accusations of censorship are ridiculous. No-one is suggesting deleting or removing the articles on the Austrian school, nor ABCT. As lk put it above, "The trouble is that they want to have the 'Austrian viewpoint' prominently and favorably displayed on many mainstream economics topics." In many articles, the primary concern seems to be to have this viewpoint pushed prominently and repetitively out of all proportion to the significance or repute of those theories and viewpoints. And I'd rather have articles reduced to stubs when most of the text is regurgitation of business cycle theory that is already covered in other articles (again, out of all proportion).

As in the case of inflation: the modern definition of inflation is essentially not disputed. It is absurd for every mention of inflation to be followed by long-winded discourse on the claim that "inflation is an action of the state" - and for every attempt to tone that down be met by claims of cabals censoring information.--Gregalton (talk) 15:07, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

QED with respect to the unpromising nature of this discussion. I didn't, in fact, accuse anyone of censorship. If you feel that you must respond to me but cannot treat my remarks in terms of what I actually wrote, then you need to take a break from this discussion, and may need to avoid editing the articles in question. —SlamDiego_←T 15:25, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to agree broadly here. It is this sort of insertion of historical/polemical/heterodox viewpoint as mainstream or fact that makes the economics section of wikipedia such a crappy tertiary resource. I'll go to the Math project when I need to read about math, stats for stats, physiscs, and so on, but I won't go to the econ project for a what the mainstream economic literature says about most subject, because what you get is bunkum. One of the primary reasons that is the case is because we are constantly dealing with the insertions of these views well out of proportion to their impact or meaning. I'm not saying that WP:ECON will magically be fixed once we deal with the people who are socking and the articles which are blatantly outside of the norm, but it is a step. Protonk (talk) 15:15, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

That's simply an expression of a more general problem: Anytime that there are public policy implications of a science, a large share of participants are not going to behave like scientists or scholars. But, indeed, this problem doesn't simply cause Wikipedia to have lots of rotten articles on social science, it also causes the corruption of scientific mainstreams. *shrug* —SlamDiego_←T 15:25, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

That's a fair look at it. I don't think we're ever going to clean up Wealth or Finance or Taxation. We can, however, identify clear problems with disproportionate influence on certain articles and deal with that influence in a centralized fashion. I'm not saying this discussion is doing that perfectly, but it's a start. Protonk (talk) 18:31, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

The interesting thing with politically sensitive articles, such as inflation, is that mainstreamers cry sockpuppetry and the others cry cencorship. In most cases, they're both equally true. It cannot be a secret to anyone that mainstreamers have gone to great lengths to get ideological opponents blocked or even banned, essentially forcing them to what they call sockpuppetry. Gregalton is already legend when it comes to this, cheered on by certain admins.

At any rate, I don't think the inflation article will ever be at peace. One can wonder why. The only answer I know is that mainstreamers don't want anything else on the site, while there are more than a few who feel other views should be represented as well. Personally, I really don't understand why Wikipedia has to promote the politically correct view, on the expense of the historically and scientifically correct one.

Misessus (talk) 17:57, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've seen sockpuppetry by editors sympathetic to the Austrian School who hadn't been previously driven from Wikipedia.

Nonetheless, it's true enough that sockpuppeteers feel licensed to cheat on Wikipedia because the mainstream has a long history of ground gained by dishonorable conduct. (The casting of Hayek into the wilderness is only one of many examples, and the Austrian School are certainly not the only victims.)

But the mainstream, in turn, has believed that its own, prior cheating has been licensed by other considerations, and they simply feel further licensed by the counter-cheating. The major effect of sockpuppetry seems to be just to further corrupt the protocols of discourse. —SlamDiego_←T 18:22, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

The difference, Misessus, is that the users in question are proven wp:sockpuppets indefinitely blocked for disruptive editing and evading those blocks.--Gregalton (talk) 19:28, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

SlamDiego, do you see anything wrong with the representation of the Austrian school on WP, and/or anything which can be done to improve it? Again, for me what's bizarre is that one can (rightly or wrongly) study a good bit of economics and never hear of Mises, and LOTS of economics without hearing of Rothbard. On the other hand, if one gets one's economics education from WP, Mises and Rothbard appear to be more prominent than most Nobel laureates. It's hard for me to know how to take that, because in any given article I might think, "huh, that's a little odd, but o well", but on the whole its an extreme imbalance. (P.S. If it's not clear I don't want to see articles on almost any school of thought removed, and while I'd like to see those articles include criticism of the school of thought, mostly I'm too lazy to worry about it. I am concerned with over-representation of minority (or fringe) thoughts in general economics articles.) CRETOG8(t/c) 19:45, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

• Well, first, I haven't really surveyed the economics articles on Wikipedia, because I have been too horrified by what I have seen to want to more fully confront what is here. I tend to work on a small number of articles, and only step beyond these when one of the articles on which I have been working is no longer intolerably bad, and I have steeled myself to go look at another.
• Second, in many of the articles that I have read, the whole structure of presentation is fundamentally wrong, in a way that both manifests and encourages inappropriate modes of competition between schools of thought.
  Specifically, articles often should begin with an explanation of concepts — not conceptions, but explications of the most general notion of the relevant ideas — then walk the reader through what can be said about these concepts, and then proceed to conceptions as special cases. Where there are rivalries amoungst the special cases, “due” emphasis should be placed on each.
  Instead, what we get is a rush to put forward a particular conception as the concept that “real economists” use, in attempt to make rival conceptions either literally unthinakble or rather loopy, because they contradict what has been misrepresented as the concept. Each party in this rush is trying to beg the question(s) in its own way.
  I've been quite aggressive in fighting to transform articles of the second form into articles of the first form, and then to keep them from devolving into articles of the second form. I've had trouble on this score from Austrians, from neo/quasi/crypto-Ricardians, from mainstream economists, and from folk whom I don't know how to classify.
• Third, where I have seen Rothbard treated prominently, I tend (metaphorically speaking) to shake my head. He was perhaps a significant popularizer, but I am only aware of one meaningful contribution to theory on his part (a critique of Mises's definition of “monopoly”), and what I've read of his historical analysis is heavily tainted by lawyerly (rather than scholarly) argument. On at least one occasion, I removed a reference to Rothbard (after a challenge that I'd place on the article talk page failed to produce a satisfactory answer).
• Fourth, there's a huge potential difference between the historical significance of a subject and the historiographical attention paid to it, and this distinction is quite relevant to Austrian School economics. (For example, James D. Hamilton defines “Keynesian” as recognizing that nominal values can have ‘real’ effects (and Hamilton identifies himself as a Keynesian on this basis), yet Keynes himself explicitly said that he acquired this notion from v. Mises.)

—SlamDiego_←T 09:05, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I think I agree with you, but I'm afraid I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean we should stick to describing the concepts, and stop worrying and arguing about who to attribute them to? If so, I whole-heartedly agree.lk (talk) 09:31, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, mostly I mean that the presentation should not be framed to steer thought at the expense of enabling it. (For example, the article “Utility” ought not to have “utility” defined in a manner than presumes even the weak quantification that most economists have in-mind when they say “ordinal”, though a large part of the article should discuss various quantified conceptions.) As to attribution and ascription, I think that it is usually best handled in a “historical” section (or in a separate, historical article), though there are important exceptions. —SlamDiego_←T 09:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Now I think I disagree with you, but I'm not sure. Wikipedia is not a textbook, WP:NOTTEXTBOOK. We are here to provide a reference resource, not an education. Wikipedia is supposed to just provide a summary of the scientific consensus, plainly noting controversies where they exist. We shouldn't be trying to inspire or enable thinking, at the expense of conciseness and clarity. lk (talk) 15:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't proposing that the articles attempt to function as a textbook, I made no reference to inspiration, and my assertion was that the presentation should not steer and the expense of enabling. Clarity is indeed the issue here. If the article is written to make it harder to think clearly about a theory other than that of some school of thought, then it disables the reader, which goes beyond failing to enable. (Thinking clearly about a rival theory is, of course, not necessarily the same thing as thinking sympathetically.) A controversy cannot be plainly noted if a conception has been substituted for a concept such that the reader cannot grasp the controversy. And if the reader cannot understand alternatives to consensus, then he or she cannot in fact understand the consensus. (NB: There is a difference between a reader who knows the alternatives and one who could understand the alternatives.) —SlamDiego_←T 21:12, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

All this philosophizing about the place of the Austrian school is fun, sure, but I don't think it does much for the encyclopedia. Probably better to identify articles overrun by these guys and report them here. Aside from inflation and business cycle, what needs to be worked on? People have pointed to Tax, but it doesn't seem problematic to me. II | (t - c) 19:15, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

SlamDiego has inserted some Austrian POV-pushing in the entries on Neoclassical economics and various entries related to Marginalism and Marginal utility, although some of this may just be idiosyncrasies, (such as his unwillingness to use the established label neo-Ricardian). The expert on Austrian Business Cycle Theory is Roger Garrison among contemporary Austrian school economists. And ABCT is incorrect. (See http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1097803) The authorities here are not Krugman, but Sraffa and Kaldor in the 1930s and 1940s and Paul Samuelson in th 1960s. I don't agree that the failure of mainstream economists to reference a journal makes it not a reliable source. As far as I am concerned, the following are all examples of reliable sources: Cambridge Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic Issues, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Review of Political Economy, and Review of Radical Political Economics. Some, for instance, Fred Lee (http://robertvienneau.blogspot.com/2006/09/where-do-correct-ideas-come-from-do.html), have documented the unscholarly mechanisms the mainstream uses to maintain their intellectual monopoly. 209.217.195.145 --RLV (talk) 17:05, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I've glanced over both these articles and I don't see what you're talking about. It would help to identify sections, or use diffs. The only Austrian mentions I see in those articles are to Carl Menger, generally recognized as one of the early marginalist theorists. In marginal utility, the lead states that Marshall attributed the term "marginal utility" to an Austrian economist -- but that's about it. I was involved in the little neoclassical economics tiff, and it seems as if both of you guys could show a little good faith. :p I got the feeling that testosterone, rather than reason, was dominating the discussion. II | (t - c) 07:47, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

In the article on Neoclassical economics, SlamDiego convinced another editor, as you know, to take up his POV-pushing for Austrian economics.

But the article on Marginal utility is more interesting. Early Austrians, such as Menger and Böhm-Bawerk had a distinctive approach to utility theory. They described "wants" as falling into categories (e.g., nourishment or desire for alcoholic beverages). And within each category, they claimed, one could rank the importance of the want satisfied by an additional good. The wikipedia article echoes this archaic theory (for example, in the first paragraph), while giving the reader no warning that most mainstream economists consider this theory out-dated, insofar as they are even aware of its past existence. There is also quite a bit in the article about whether utility can be quantified. This is an area of dispute between Austrians and mainstream economists. Mainstream economists generally think that they long ago assumed utility doesn't need to be quantitative when they took up indifference curves and ordinal utility. Many just don't understand what Austrians could be talking about. Furthermore, the article may be in error when it claims the law of diminishing marginal utility doesn't require utility to be cardinal. I'm also unsure whether the bit on risk aversion (in the revival section) is correct. I'm also unsure, in the first paragraph of the "marginality" section, about discrete marginal changes. Mainstream economists, such as Debreu, have long ago framed their theory in terms of topology. Likewise, remarks about measures in the article seem to confuse measure theory with the theory of measurement scales. What do you think of the use of the phrase "mainstream economics" or "mainstream economists" in that article? Finally, you should read my comments as more amused than angry. -- RLV 209.217.195.99 (talk) 23:22, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Robert writes “SlamDiego convinced another editor, as you know, to take up his POV-pushing for Austrian economics.” without bothering to meet II's request for diffs showing Austrian School PoV-pushing, let alone some evidence that I'm responsible for any other editor PoV-pushing. (I, for one, would like to know who the H_ll he thinks I convinced to argue or edit or whatever it is to which Robert refers.) Robert's “as you know” would be a poor substitute for evidence in any case, but plainly II doesn't know, or he wouldn't have asked.

Robert also doesn't understand marginal utility enough to distinguish between a fully general theory, and a tine of a fork. (Neither did some of the neoclassical economists who edited the article until there was a lengthy, messy mathematical argument on the talk page.) Just as sets to which measures can be fit are a special case of sets which are total orders, utility functions which map to real numbers are a special case of those that map to rankings. The fact that many economists are unaware of the mathematical possibility of economically rational preferences that don't fit even very weak quantification doesn't negate the math. As Protonk notes below, the Austrian School was simply ahead of the game. The article doesn't insist that utility isn't quantified; it doesn't even insist that it isn't strongly quantified; it simply notes that the assumption of quantification isn't necessary for the law of diminishing marginal utility and the implications of that law for a theory of supply and demand. (The fact that Robert expressed uncertainty about this and other points doesn't tell us much about anything. And if Robert were actually familiar with the literature, then he would know that quantified utility, like probability, is what mathematicians call a “measure”. Best for him not to speculate at this point.) The article goes on to explain the mainstream, quantified conception, and its history section explains that expected utility maximization not only revived interest in utility theory, but entails a quantitative conception. —SlamDiego_←T 22:58, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll take SlamDiego's comments as an acknowledgement that the entry on Marginal utility promotes an Austrian POV. I'll also take these comments as exhibiting the same confusion between measure theory and measurement theory that I think is reflected in the article.

The article on Marginalism also pushes the Austrian POV. For example, consider the second sentence in the lead paragraph: "The central concept of marginalism proper is that of marginal utility, but marginalists following the lead of Alfred Marshall were further heavily dependent upon the concept of marginal physical productivity in their explanation of cost; and the neoclassical tradition that emerged from British marginalism generally abandoned the concept of utility and gave marginal rates of substitution a more fundamental rôle in analysis." The idea that marginal utility is more central to marginalism than marginal physical productivity is a disputed viewpoint. Austrians, of course, emphasize subjectivism and therefore would want to emphasize utility over physical productivity. I don't know what the bit about "British marginalism" abandoning "the concept of utility" could be about. "Marginal rates of substitution" are still about utility. I suppose one could make an argument that the later concept of "revealed preference" was a matter of abandoning utility, although I would disagree. -- RLV 209.217.195.106 (talk) 01:18, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not up on the fine details of this debate, but I am concerned that these articles are both on the technical side, especially in the introduction, and I don't think they have to be. For example, the lead of marginal utility is difficult to parse:

the marginal utility of a good or of a service is the utility of the specific use to which an agent would put a given increase in that good or service, or of the specific use that would be abandoned in response to a given decrease. In other words, marginal utility is the utility of the marginal use — which, on the assumption of economic rationality, would be the least urgent use of the good or service, from the best feasible combination of actions in which its use is included.[1][2] Under the mainstream assumptions, the marginal utility of a good or service is the posited quantified change in utility obtained by using one more or one less unit of that good or service.

I always thought that marginal utility should be related to the change in "benefit" or "satisfaction" generated by the change in the consumption of a good. Am I wrong? II | (t - c) 01:30, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure who Robert is but I have a few points. 1: that lead is pretty complex, guess I should get off my ass and try to make it more straightforward. 2: SlamDiego is NOT the problem here. This whole mess was precipitated by a group of editors who violated policy in order to push POV's and get good editors out of articles. We are trying to clean up that aftermath and try to deal with a possible resurgence. 3: The austrian conception of marginal utility, while rejected as heterodox was ahead of the game in some ways. Utility isn't cardinal. It probably isn't even comparable across classes of wants (experimentally the jury is out on this, but not for long IMO). The reason it was held in disfavor for so long was largely because it didn't provide a mathematical formulation for a set of testable propositions. In hindsight, it is certainly possible to find a large number of sources which will argue that late 19th century-early 20th century descriptions of utility provides little in the way of explanation of behavior. 4. A critical understanding to this problem as a whole (lest this get mired into a MU debate) is that the Austrian school isn't one entity. the ABCT isn't the austrian criticism of social planning isn't the austrian view on central banking isn't the austrian view on personal liberies, etc. Some of these views are relatively more appropriate in articles than others. Protonk (talk) 01:41, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

At this stage, Robert is simply trolling, and there's not much point in my replying to him.

That lede may be pretty convoluted, but it satisfied a set of editors from very different schools of thought. You'll need to balance boldness with caution to avoid another long, unhappy argument. —SlamDiego_←T 02:39, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The reference to Marshall's attribution also wasn't something that I put in the lede or especially feel needs to be there, though it has the merit of avoiding a separate section on etymology (when a simple sentence is sufficient).

The fact is that, for a while, “Marginal utility” was a battleground because I insisted that its approach be fully general, instead of begging a question by presuming that utility had a quantitative property. (From the perspective of someone who thiks that the Austrian School notion should be unthinkable, this would be PoV-pushing.) And both “Marginal utility” and (especially) “Marginalism” came under repeated attacks by amateur enthusiasts of the labor theory of value who thought that they had telling critiques.

You, II, are pretty well-positioned to judge whether I've done any PoV-pushing at “Neoclassical economics”, since you were party to the discussion and have editted the article a few times.

And Robert is simply presumptive when he thinks that I mean to refer only to Neo-Ricardianism when I write something such as “neo/quasi/crypto-Ricardian”. There are a great many schools of thought that are Ricardian or represent a reworking of Ricardo; it would be wrong for me to use the label “neo-Ricardian” for all of them, needlessly tedious for me to enumerate them in a context such as this discussion. —SlamDiego_←T 17:53, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

It's off the topic, of course, but I do think that a good historical discussion of marginal utility would benefit from some perspective. Things like the "Ramsey hedonometer" seem so absurd today we forget that they were put forth by people who weren't crackpots. Likewise much of the 19th century marginalism history can be partially told as "when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail". As the calculus of continuous functions allowed for deep analysis of those fuctions, proponents of marginalism assumed certain functional forms for no reason other than mathematical tractability (basically). The austrian school deserves a prominent place in that article as a source of fundamental criticism that was ignored by economists (largely) as outside the realm of the Kuhnian "normal" science. Protonk (talk) 18:23, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

While this discussion has been about the Austrian school, I'm wondering if, operationally, that's the wrong way to go. I suggest that it might be more effective to concentrate on particular sources. The Austrians on WP tend to be represented by very few sources, so it may be possible to address the sources. By doing so, a viewpoint which is so minority or fringe that it requires relying on one of these very few sources will be treated appropriately without any over-arching judgement of Austrianism. I also think that whatever comes out of this discussion should be usable by more than the handful of people who fully comprehend the place of Austrianism within economic thought. As a start, I'd suggest:

• Attributing ideas to the "Austrian school" in general should be very limited, mostly to history articles or sections. Otherwise, things should be attributed to specific authors.
• If an idea needs to be sourced to Joseph Salerno or Murray Rothbard (or others?), it is probably too fringe for a general economics article.
• If an idea needs to be sourced to Ludwig von Mises, it probably belongs in a "history" bit. (This doesn't mean his ideas are only important historically, but that those ideas which have caught hold can also be sourced to other, recognizably mainstream sources.)
• If an idea is sourced to Friedrich Hayek, the idea needs to be assessed on its own grounds (Hayek has been fully adopted by the mainstream, although some of his ideas are quite far-out by mainstream standards.)
• I have only the fuzziest notion of where Joseph Schumpeter should fall in this categorization.
• If an idea needs to be sourced to an Austrian-specific journal, then it is likely too minority to be included.
• If an idea needs to be sourced to an Austrian-oriented web site (such as lewrockwell.com (see below) or mises.org), then it is likely too minority to be included.

Those are suggestions. I don't know if that leaves room for Austrians to "punch above their weight" or it completely marginalizes them. I'm hoping that specificity can help against seemingly over-general arguments in this discussion. CRETOG8(t/c) 19:59, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with Cretog8 on this one. This is very dependent on the article topic. Painting it with a broad brush regarding the entire economics field doesn't make sense to me. Their contributions \ criticisms should be weighted in whatever the particular topic point is. I certainly agree with using reliable sources, and it doesn't follow that the reliable source should be used as some method of exclusion. Use the basics... does the source meet reliable source requirements, is the material in proper weight with regard to the overall topic, do they present a viewpoint that should be included per NPOV. I don't care if they reference Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, or whoever - allow attribution of the content so long as it is from a reliable source. Don't get into... well if you're attributing it to Rothbard or sourcing Mises.org, we're not going to allow it. That seems illogical to me and I completely disagree with that approach. Target each particular subject point, include notable viewpoints, present all viewpoints without bias, presenting competing views in proportion to their representation. It should also not be asserted that the most popular view, or some sort of intermediate view among the different views, is the correct one to the extent that other views are mentioned only pejoratively (allow sufficent explaniation or summary of the viewpoint). More detail on the particular viewpoint can be contained on articles specific to those viewpoints. Morphh ^(talk) 20:42, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I understand where you're coming from, Morphh. Certainly, everything depends on the article context. My attempt above (which seems to have been a no-starter anyway) was trying to figure out practical guidelines that someone like me could use. The guidelines were meant to express the following: Rothbard may be a reliable source on many things. However, if Rothbard is the only souorce you can find for something, that probably means it's an Austrian-specific idea, and therefore probably (still only probably) doesn't belong in a general economics article. If it does belong, there's probably other sources which can be found. Anyway, it does look like it was a no-starter. If lk and SlamDiego can keep bashing at the idea without causing each other cerebral hemorrhaging, they might arrive at a set of principles. My hope is those principles will be useful as well as consensus. CRETOG8(t/c) 23:32, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Consensus conclusions on the Austrian School

Before we step away from this issue, we should probably outline some consensus conclusions about it. I propose the following based on our discussions:

1. Although notable, currently, the Austrian viewpoint receives undue weight in many economics articles.
2. Modern day Austrian economics is a fringe view, held by a distinct minority of academic economists today. It is at best Questionable Science as defined by WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard (Theories which have a substantial following, such as psychoanalysis, but which some critics allege to be pseudoscience).
3. Weight for the 'Austrian viewpoint' should be proportional to the the school's prominence in reliable sources, i.e. university based peer-reviewed journals, university published books, and university-level textbooks; note that by this criteria Austrian economics is currently less prominent than Marxian economics.
4. Coverage of the 'Austrian viewpoint' should not be unequivocally favorable (per WP:NPV), and should note the significant controversies they have with the mainstream view.
5. The Austrian School is relevant historically, and was part of the mainstream in the early 20th century. Austrian economists (Hayek being most prominent) contributed significantly to mainstream economic thought. Like other schools, the Austrian School has contributed to economic theory. However, issues of where ideas originated should only be treated in articles about the history of a topic or the history section of an article.

Let's try to work towards a list of statements that we can agree on. Please add to the list as you think fit, and add comments below this line. --lk (talk) 20:17, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your points except for #2. I agree that the Austrian economics is a fringe view, but see it as at worst a Questionable Science, rather than at best. Comparing it to astrology is far too extreme; further, though some elements of the viewpoint have been discredited, the school as a whole has adapted its view (as all must) to better fit the data. On the "Obvious pseudoscience - Generally considered pseudoscience - Questionable science - Alternative theoretical formulations" scale [Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pseudoscience#Questionable_science here], I would put it between questionable science and alternative theoretical formulations.

This is a good summary; thanks for putting it together, Lawrencekhoo.

CRGreathouse (t | c) 21:50, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree w/ CRGreathouse. Might as well just file a content RFC for this page section to get some wider input. Protonk (talk) 21:52, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree with CRGreathouse. "Questionable" is right. In many ways, the problem is not with the views (which overlap to a fair extent with the free-market end of the mainstream) as in the insistence that the (remnant of the) Austrian School possesses insights denied to all others. That attitude has been evident in the contributions of Austrian editors here.JQ (talk) 23:20, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

The proposing of #2 is exactly the sort of thing that causes some enthusiast of the Austrian School to feel licensed to engage in the behaviors that many of us here find problematic. —SlamDiego_←T 23:36, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

OK ok, lets scratch out number 2. But I'm catching a lot of flak for this, so let me explain why I proposed it. Psychoanalysis is the benchmark example given for 'Questionable Science'. I think that in Economics, the Austrian school is less mainstream than psychoanalysis is to psychology. Also, the definition for 'Questionable Science' is that "some critics allege [it] to be pseudoscience". There is a significant number of economists who consider it to be pseudoscience – Krugman for example. lk (talk) 04:40, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

First of all, you need to note what some are doing here and you are not — distinguishing between the Austrian School in general and some of the more wild-eyed enthusiasts. Second, “mainstream” is about popularity, while “science” is about epistemological protocol (“scientific method”). The insights of the third and fourth generation Austrian School economists that are now widely accepted were once widely ridiculed; they haven't somehow become more scientific in the interim. (Rather, the mainstream has become either more or less scientific in accepting them.) Finally, as to Krugman, when it comes to dealing with economists who tend not to share his political convictions, he behaves in a grossly unscientific, unscholarly manner. (For example, in one section of Peddling Prosperity, he ridicules the “Laffer” curve as absurd, and in another treats it as something that was already obvious to everyone.) —SlamDiego_←T 05:56, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not intellectually defending Krugman, but are you sure he wasn't mocking the current political presentation of the laffer curve? It is obvious that something like the laffer curve exists, but the most common invokations of it outside of an undregraduate economics class are politicians and pundits arguing that most taxes are on the right side of the curve. that is absurd. Again, not defending Krugman wholeheartedly, just noting a possible reason for that. Protonk (talk) 06:47, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm indeed quite sure. (I am amongst those who are highly skeptical of claims to know which side of the curve the United States were.) And this is hardly the only case of Krugman behaving egregiously in critique. I can rattled-off more examples if they're deemed useful to this discussion.

But the really important thing is that there is a difference between scientific opinion and the opinions held by those who are known as scientists. Even if someone has done some flawless scientific work, that doesn't mean that his or her opinion on all relevant matters is a scientific opinion. It may be perfectly accurate to claim that an opinion in not held by a mainstream of experts, and it may then be appropriate to reduce its treatment in Wikipedia accordingly. But to claim that an opinion is unscientific or (worse) pseudo-scientific because it is not held by a mainstream of experts is itself an unscientific evaluation, and deeply offensive in those cases where the minority are doing a better job of being scientists. —SlamDiego_←T 14:50, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

(And if we're going to let stand the definition of “Questionable Science” that “some critics allege [it] to be pseudoscience”, then there is no science that is not to be labelled “Questionable”, as there are always some critics who'll alleged it to be pseudscience, as in some neo/quasi/crypto-Ricardian attacks on mainstream economics.) —SlamDiego_←T 15:38, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Agreed that point number 2 is not needed. OTOH, I think the analogy with psychoanalysis is excellent. Some historically important ideas like the role of the subconscious that are now generally accepted, but little of value being done today.JQ (talk) 04:55, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree that "Austrian economics is currently less prominent that the Marxian economics". You haven't provided one shred of evidence for such claim. Also, Hayek is not only Nobel laureate associated with the Austrian school. James M. Buchanan is closely associated with the fourth generation of Austrian economists [12]. -- Vision Thing -- 13:25, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

If we're talking about economists strongly and positively associated with the Austrian School, then the list of laureates becomes quite notable. On the other hand, Buchanan has made it clear that he regarded himself as belonging primarily to the LSE tradition. (See his remarks in Cost and Choice on his own ties, and for his view on some of the interrelationship between the Austrian School and other traditions.) —SlamDiego_←T 15:00, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

In this interview Buchanan said that he doesn't object to be called an Austrian economist, and some other sources also classify him as such. The point I wish to make is that I don't know for any Nobel laureates who are Marxist or are closely and positively associated with Marxian economics. -- Vision Thing -- 18:44, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Nonetheless, Buchanan, while perhaps not minding the classification, doesn't use it for himself. I reiterate, though, that we can certainly find a significant number of Nobel laureates who have a strong association with the Austrian School and look upon it favorably. —SlamDiego_←T 16:38, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay, so returning to the proposed consensus above is there agreement on the rest of the principles? It seems that the above debate is mostly about principle 2 which has already been removed. I don't think we will ever agree on principle 2 anyway - if nothing else then because the definition of what is questionable science or not is inherently flawed as pointed out by SlamDiego. It would be nice if we could agree that what is in the "primary" articles on inflation etc. is what people would most likely find if they searched for this information elsewhere (textbooks and journals) and then agree that Austrian economics is notable enough to deserve full coverage in seperate articles and then keep the coverage in articles such as inflation to the same level as what is found in journals and textbooks. I've interacted with SlamDiego before - he is a reasonable guy so I'm sure some kind of consensus can be achieved here if we stay focused. EconomicsGuy (talk) 17:38, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

• Although notable, currently, the Austrian viewpoint receives undue weight in many economics articles. – This is fine but we should note that this may be a result of under representation of mainstream view, and not necessarily over representation of Austrian view. In such cases, proper solution is to expand articles in question by covering mainstream view at length it deserves.
• Weight for the 'Austrian viewpoint' should be proportional to the the school's prominence in reliable sources, i.e. university based peer-reviewed journals, university published books, and university-level textbooks; note that by this criteria Austrian economics is currently less prominent that Marxian economics. – Not only that there is no need for the last part about Marxian economics, it is also incorrect.
• Coverage of the 'Austrian viewpoint' should not be unequivocally favorable (per WP:NPV), and should note the significant controversies they have with the mainstream view. – This is fine, except I would add a clause "in cases when such controversies exist" because, as already noted, parts of Austrian contribution are incorporated into mainstream economics.
• The Austrian School is relevant historically, and was part of the mainstream in the early 20th century. Austrian economists (Hayek being most prominent) contributed significantly to mainstream economic thought. However, issues of where ideas originated should only be treated in articles about the history of a topic or the history section of an article. - This if fine as such, but it seems to imply that Austrian views shouldn't be discussed in the rest of the article if they are not in line with mainstream view. If that is the case, such treatment would be contrary to WP:NPOV.

-- Vision Thing -- 18:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

This may be automatically implied by #1 but I thought it worth saying that the criteria will depend on the scope of the article. Each article will have it's own weight assessment with regard to viewpoints. The viewpoint might merit brief mention on price inflation but a larger weight on monetary inflation. In an article that is more targeted to the minority viewpoint, they could have significant weight. I do think we have to be careful with #3 and this will depend on the article scope - while peer-review journals and university text are highly prized sources, they are not the requirement for inclusion or exclusion. The ivory tower is fine, but so long as the source is reliable, we have to consider the viewpoint and weight with regard to the article topic. I agree with EconomicsGuy that full coverage might be best in a separate article devoted to the minority viewpoint. I would think we want to maintain the details regarding their viewpoints, just that their weight in higher level articles may need to be decreased into a summary style, wikilinking, or see also tagging. Morphh ^(talk) 21:23, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I am not an economist but I have been following the edit wars and the proposal seems broadly fair to me (with item 2 removed). I am sure that the disruptive element among the Austrian School editors will continue to complain of censorship whenever their blatant advocacy is curtailed. I don't know to what extent this is tactical and to what extent they genuinely feel oppressed. Either way, I feel that we can safely disregard this. If we follow these guidelines they will have more than adequate coverage of their views, in the appropriate articles, and absolutely no legitimate claims to censorship. They will still be punching above their weight compared to some other minor/historical schools of thought and perhaps one of the best things we can do is think about what other economic schools deserve to have their coverage expanded.

• On item 3, I feel that peer reviewed journals are not the only source of notability. Marxism, for example, gains much additional notability from the fact that it was put into practice in many states for a prolonged period of time. If the Austrian School was totally ignored by peer reviewed journals but guided the economic policy of an actual state somewhere, and was hailed as such its non-peer reviewed publications, then that would be an alternative route to notability. Of course, this isn't the case and I don't expect it to happen. I only mention it because there are other paths to notability. What these paths to notability all share is the principle that ideas must be accepted/acknowledged by the real world first and then they can be put into the encyclopaedias. The Austrian School can't be allowed to squeeze their ideas into the encyclopaedias as a way to promote and disseminate them into the real world. I feel that there has been far too much of the later going on recently.
• On item 5, I agree (relying on other people's comments as I lack direct knowledge of this) that it seems that the Austrian School is primarily only of historic interest and that the coverage should reflect this. I very much agree that they should not be squeezing in their historic arguments, and namechecking themselves, all over the place. However, item 5 should not preclude coverage of anything genuinely new that they might come up with, subject to it passing the other criteria and not being given undue prominence or promotional coverage.

--DanielRigal (talk) 21:50, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

The bald lack of civility is sweeping remarks such as

I am sure that the Austrian School editors will continue to complain of censorship whenever their blatant advocacy is curtailed.

is telling. The wilder-eyed Austrian School enthusiasts aren't the only editors out-of-line in this whole process. And. again, the improper behavior of their opponents is a large part of what makes them feel licensed to act badly themselves. —SlamDiego_←T 23:44, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I can only speak as I find, and what I find is editors who openly identify themselves with the Austrian School, editing in a disruptive and propagandist way on what they perceive to be its behalf and complaining of censorship exactly as I described above. That said, I appreciate that there are other editors who are sympathetic to the Austrian School who are able to conduct themselves with responsibility and dignity on Wikipedia so I have qualified my statement above so that it is clear that I am not talking about them. I would not want to offend anybody who edits Wikipedia in good faith and within the rules. Sadly, it is often the most disruptive in a group who make the most impact and taint the perception of the others. It was not my intention to contribute to that. My point, which maybe I expressed poorly, was that we can't allow the unfounded complaints of censorship from the disruptive editors to deter us from rebalancing the articles correctly and hence I welcome the proposed conclusions. I am not sure what you mean by "the improper behavior of their opponents". I have been very circumspect about reverting the disruptive editors as I am aware that I am not very knowledgeable in this area. I have been watching the others who have been trying to deal with the disruptive editors and I have seen that they have shown considerable tolerance and repeatedly tried to encourage the disruptive editors to adopt a more constructive approach. They got little more than ranting and accusations in reply. --DanielRigal (talk) 00:10, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

The proper way to retract remarks after an objection has been raised to them is to use to place them within a <strike> element. Editing them in the manner that you have falsifies the discourse, so that the objection is made to look crack-pot. —SlamDiego_←T 00:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I made it very clear what I was doing so that it wouldn't look like you misquoted me. I am not sure how I am supposed to make a change which adds a qualification by striking something out. I am not trying to falsify or misrepresent anything. --DanielRigal (talk) 00:37, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

It's only clear to someone who has proceeded past what otherwise looks like a crack-pot objection, rather than bailing at that point. A way to accomplish the edit with a <strike> element would be this:

the Austrian School editors the disruptive element among the Austrian School editors

though you could also have instead accomplished the same effect with the judicious use of brackets. I realize that you weren't trying to falsify the discussion, else I would have stopped trying to deal with you directly. —SlamDiego_←T 01:06, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

SlamDiego, You're being unduly critical of Daniel, who was just stating his honest opinion. I agree that there are perfectly reasonable Austrian economists editing here (I number you among them), but he has reasons for feeling the way he feels, as his interactions with 'Austrian editors' so far has not been very nice. Remember, Don't bite the newbies. lk (talk) 07:29, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

No. Were a person beaten-up by members of my ethnic group, he might “have reasons” for an “honest” grudge against everyone in that group, but that wouldn't entitle him to sweepingly insult that group. Further, DanielRigal is not a newbie.

And you're not even being consistent here. The vast majority of the problematic Austrian School editors are expressing honest opinion, certainly have reasons for feeling as they do, And many of the distruptive enthusiasts are newbies. —SlamDiego_←T 16:30, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I am being consistent. Until Misessus started launching personal attacks at me, I have never critised anyone for being rude. I have asked people to be polite, but I try to be civil when I do so. Even with Misessus, it was only about a week after his persistent nearly daily personal attacks did I tell him that he was rude and to go away. lk (talk) 18:34, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

The proposition that you were tolerant of Misessus doesn't contradict the point that you are being inconsistent. We're talking about dealing with a class of disruptive editors. (If the behavior of Misessus were the only issue, then this whole discussion would be misguided; one should instead launch an RfC about Misessus.) —SlamDiego_←T 19:03, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay, now as to the present v. historical significance issue:

1. While the distinctive work that the third-and-fourth generations of the Austrian School which is now largely absorbed by the mainstream was done almost entirely in the first half of the 20th Century, it wasn't accepted by the mainstream in that first half. Hayek wasn't brought back from the wilderness until the '70s. (The Austrian School is far from unique for having suffered such delays. Consider the lag between when Ramsey produced his SEU model, and when Savage got people to pay attention to it.)
   (And the process of getting old work by the Austrian School accepted into the mainstream appears to be on-going. (The Austrian School is not unique in this regard either.) Albeit that Wikpedia is not a crystal ball.)
2. Many articles aren't in fact concerned with particularly recent work from any school of economics. In such cases, it isn't going to be appropriate to wave-away a school because it hasn't made (or hasn't seemed to make) a recent contribution.

—SlamDiego_←T 01:06, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Question for SlamDiego: Do you agree that Marxian economics is more notable (in the encyclopedic sense) than Austrian economics? Do you agree that in general articles (not about history), ideas should be presented without reference to what school they originated from? lk (talk) 06:53, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd want you to define explicitly what you meant by “the encyclopedic sense” before I answered your question. But Marxism is certainly incredibly notable in some sense.

Marxism provided the intellectual infrastructure for systems that killed tens of millions of people, and I'm hard-pressed to think of what the Austrian School might have done that measures-up against that. If we want to look at peer-reviewed publications, then we can look at the vast body of academic literature turned-out by under some of the regimes associated with that killing. But what is one, really, to make of such things? —SlamDiego_←T 16:30, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt response. Let me define 'notable in the encyclopedic sense' as: 'deserving of space in an encyclopedia article, as users are likely to want to know about the subject'. Howabout the history question? lk (talk) 18:13, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, under that definition, I'd have to say that both Marxist economics and Austrian School economics were more encylopedically notable than is mainstream economics, simply based on what people choose to buy and to read.

As to which of these two (Marxism and Austrian School) were more notable (under that definition), I'm not quite sure. As various authors have remarked, even ostensible Marxists typically don't seem really to want to know the details of Marxism; they just want some sense of assurance that a theory exists somewhere to vindicate their preferred social order. Meanwhile, popularizations of Austrian School stuff tend not only to sell well but to actually get read. How does one weigh such things?

I'd actually already answered the history question, when you previously asked it of me. Typically, history should go into a history section or into a separate history article, rather than being folded into the principal discussion, thought there will be a few cases where folding-in the history of the ideas will actually help many readers apprehend those ideas while hindering few or no readers. To that previous answer, I will add a note that sometimes a single history article could carry the relevant load for more than one non-history article. —SlamDiego_←T 19:03, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I think I'd give half-hearted agreement with those points (again excepting #2). Half-hearted for two reasons. First, I don't see that there is consensus yet, as much as I'd like to see it. Second, except for #1, I'm afraid those points are too vague to be useful in practice--they're doing little but restating the general WP guidelines. So I'm not at all confident that consensus on those points will help in establishing practice. CRETOG8(t/c) 01:37, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

We have to be realistic. We are not going to solve an academic dispute this old on a Wikipedia talk page. That is unrealistic. What we can do is try to establish a consensus on how to present the differing views in a way that does not conflict with WP:UNDUE. One way to move forward would be to strike the part about Marxian economics vs. Austrian economics. The problem here is not how Marxian economics is covered and we aren't going to achieve any consensus by having that debate now. EconomicsGuy (talk) 07:18, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I think these things are best handled individually rather than through a list of prime directives. Drop a note here on particular articles if you need help defending against undue weight issues, and drop another note if nobody seems to be responding. The lead of Austrian School has a source which says the school is between fringe and mainstream. That's probably right. II | (t - c) 07:47, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

That statement is sourced to an article written by Peter Boettke, editor-in-chief of the Review of Austrian Economics – not exactly an unbiased source. I still think that a list of consensus findings would be helpful. That way, whenever there is an edit war about Austrian economics, we can refer back to the consensus guidelines on this issue. lk (talk) 15:10, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

A statement of ostensible consensus should neither operationalize as little more than ventilation nor serve as a stalking horse on the other side of which is carried a bell, book, and candle. My impression is that more than one of the non-Austrian School editors here sense the danger of the latter. —SlamDiego_←T 15:33, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not being facetious here, but can I have that in plain English please? lk (talk) 18:13, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Eh, it's plain enough, really. —SlamDiego_←T 19:12, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I really don't think this is that controversial. We should narrow the proposal to refer more specifically to issue advocacy and pushing of minority viewpoints as mainstream, but the basic idea is sound and not really all that censorious. I understand and appreciate Slamdiego's concerns but I think that he is taking this to mean something it doesn't. Protonk (talk) 18:23, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Protonk, I noted two mutually exclusive outcomes (empty ventilation and stalking horse). I didn't say which I thought to be more likely, nor did I say that the two were jointly exhaustive. (You can reasonably infer which of the two most concerns me.) —SlamDiego_←T 19:12, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about the general bent of your opposition. I understand and respect that, but I think that you are making this thread out to be something it isn't. We've had this discussion before (the goatse AfD). I don't think that most editors are here to build an epistemologically consistent system. When we assume that they must, or we ascribe formalism to informal comments, the discussion of a relatively pragmatic matter becomes kind of byzantine. As I see it, we are faced with a practical problem. The austrian school is over-represented on the internet and on wikipedia for a variety of reasons (not least of all because they make most of the information widely accessible). Sometimes this over-representation comes in the form of the insertion of political advocacy into otherwise unrelated articles (a lot of the FRB and inflation problems). Sometimes this comes in the form of a poor balancing of economic views. These are problems, plain and simple. We, as a project, need a way to go about fixing these problems and gauging community consensus about what to do in the very likely event that they continue to crop up. this is not, in fact, censorship and it is not a proxy debate about the status of heterodox theories inside what is basically a normal science. Those two issues are important and deserve time but this is not the place to have the discussion. When I see this thread devolve into parsing of phrases and words I fear that we have lost the forest for the trees. That's all. Protonk (talk) 19:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

For good or ill, the participants here don't have a shared intuition about where the problem begins or ends, and we especially don't have a shared underlying sense of what constitute appropriate responses to problems. There is little chance of a happy solution period, and virtually none if people aren't made to be careful, in spite of all of the costs of care. —SlamDiego_←T 19:39, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

That's pretty well on the nose. Protonk (talk) 19:41, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, my reading of the comments here is that we already have broad agreement on most of the statements (except 2 of course). The only contentious one left is number 3. Now, how about if we replace "currently less prominent than" with comparable to Marxian economics? Or ditch Marx, and say "comparable to the standing of psychoanalysis in the field of psychology". Or should we erase the sentence altogether? lk (talk) 00:18, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

As I have already pointed-out, declaration 5 is false. It is based on a mistaken presumption that work that has been accepted by the mainstream was accepted when it was done. Since some of the contributions weren't accepted until fairly recently, and Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, let's consign the Austrian School neither to an ash-heap nor to a pantheon. Instead, let's just agree that (as I have said) the history of ideas shouldn't typically be entangled with the presentation of the ideas themselves. —SlamDiego_←T 00:56, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Given that you agree that history should usually go into a history section or into a separate history article, how would you write number 5? lk (talk) 03:48, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Thus: “Almost always, the history of presently relevant ideas is of less significance than the ideas themselves, and in no case should the principal exposition of those ideas be obscured by historical discussion. Accordingly, historical discussion should typically be placed in a separate section or separate article, rather than being integrated with the rest of the exposition.” —SlamDiego_←T 18:49, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Since this statement is not controversial: The Austrian School is relevant historically, and was part of the mainstream in the early 20th century. Austrian economists (Hayek being most prominent) contributed significantly to mainstream economic thought. And you've already agreed to the principle behind this statement: Issues of where ideas originated should only be treated in articles about the history of a topic or the history section of an article. I take it from your silence that you were mistaken in claiming that "As I have already pointed-out, declaration 5 is false."

My reading of this discussion is that apart from the relative importance of Austrian and Marxian economics, we have consensus. lk (talk) 18:23, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Since that statement has repeatedly been controverted, you should cease and desist from claiming that it is not controversial. Stop wasting time. —SlamDiego_←T 18:49, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Then I take it your problem is with: The Austrian School is relevant historically, and was part of the mainstream in the early 20th century. Austrian economists (Hayek being most prominent) contributed significantly to mainstream economic thought.

OK, let's leave it out, and change number 5 to:

Like other schools, the Austrian School has contributed to economic theory, however, issues of where ideas originated should only be treated in articles about the history of a topic or the history section of an article.

lk (talk) 04:13, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, with that statement the principle is not motivated, and the moitvation that some will infer is simply a desire to avoid crediting the Austrian School in particular. In the case of this and each of the other principles to be stated, it would be better to identify and motivate the general principles, and make subsequent reference to the Austrian School only if the application is deemed to be insufficiently obvious. —SlamDiego_←T 13:18, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, I read that as no strong objection to: Like other schools, the Austrian School has contributed to economic theory, however, issues of where ideas originated should only be treated in articles about the history of a topic or the history section of an article. I'm going to replace number 5. Howabout number 3? Is Austrian economics comparable to Marxian economics? lk (talk) 16:56, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Plenty of other types of heterodox economics exist, and their perspectives should be included in articles where appropriate. For what it's worth, I write the original version of the Austrian School entry, not that I have much interest in how it has evolved. For my own purposes, I have recently wrote up a reading list of recent examples of Marxist econometrics: http://robertvienneau.blogspot.com/2008/09/empirical-applications-of-marxism.html. A couple of these references are not Marxist, and this is really a very narrow slice of current literature on Marxism. Marxist/Marxian economics is notable. -- RLV 209.217.195.81 (talk) 09:21, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

SlamDiego certainly has a point. If this point is supposed to be a general principle, and not just targeting the Austrian school, then there's no reason for it to mention the Austrian school. If it is meant to target the Austrian school, it should be explicit in doing so. CRETOG8(t/c) 17:11, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not perfectly sure that it's relevant whether the Austrian School is comparable to Marxist economics, but there's good reason to doubt that it is. For one: We've had all these admissions that the mainstream has been adopted various Austrian School innovations, so… …where are the Marxist contributions to mainstream economic theory? (The Solow growth model, maybe?)

(I'm not, of course, asking simply for examples of contributions by economists who accepted aspects of Marxist economics, but for examples where the contribution itself can be said to be Marxist.)

There's no doubt that Marxism has had a profound effect on the world; but that significance has not been founded in its scientific merit, regardless of how one might judge that merit. Instead, the significance of Marxism has been of the same sort as the significance of scripturally based economic theories. We might as well draw upon papal bulls.

Frankly, the tail-end of #3 (like the original beginning of #5, and all of #2) doesn't seem like a policy so much as like an attempt to somehow win an argument by quasi-democratic means. All that needs to be purged from these proposals. —SlamDiego_←T 00:55, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I believe I understand your objections. I propose the following consensus statement instead:

Although notable, Austrian economics represents a distinct minority view and it currently receives disproportionately heavy and favourable coverage in many economics articles. To address this issue, these principles about the coverage of minority viewpoints should be kept in mind when editing project articles:

1. Based on WP:NPV, coverage of any particular minority viewpoint should be presented neutrally, and should note any significant controversies or disagreements with the mainstream view.
2. According to WP:Undue weight, weight for a minority viewpoint should be proportional to that viewpoint's prominence in reliable sources, i.e. university based peer-reviewed journals, university published books, and university-level textbooks. (The coverage of psychoanalysis in psychology articles can be used as a reference.)
3. Issues of where ideas originated should usually only be treated in articles about the history of a topic or the history section of an article.
4. Correctly referenced WP:NPV statements should usually not be removed from Wikipedia. However, if necessary to retain proper weight within an article, they should be moved to a separate section, or a separate article that more directly addresses the issue.

I'm moderately uncomfortable with those principles. I'm not planning to argue much if they gather consensus from others, but here's my objections. Numbers (1), (2), and (4) are indeed very general. #4 might be adding something new, but #1 and #2 are sufficiently general that I don't see them as being anything new; they're restating WP guidelines. If the guidelines weren't enough before, I don't expect restating them will be much help. #3 is probably new, but troubling in a different way. Particularly as stated (absolute "should only" rather than flexible "should usually") it looks like bait for people trying to make a WP:Point--concentrating on concepts rather than history seems like a good general rule, but I really fear it could bite us in the ass. CRETOG8(t/c) 08:37, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I've changed the statements a bit in response to your concerns, adding the word usually to #3, and suggesting psychoanalysis as a reference in #2. lk (talk) 15:29, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't care for the i.e. and () of #2. It pulls it right into Fringe, which I thought we were leaving out due to non-consensus. I'm not sure what we're trying to do here. Follow the current policies - we don't need our own interpretation and specification. I think we all agree that it is a minority viewpoint. I'd rather see us listing what articles need work and coming together to correct those specific issues, instead of some economics cabal dictating Austrian economics rules. I haven't been involved in many of the disputes so I'm probably missing something. However, I do think there are multiple aspects to consider here. The ideas are not just historic. I just read Ron Paul's (U.S. presidential candidate) latest 2008 book The Revolution: A Manifesto (which became a New York Times and Amazon.com bestseller) - before you go judging me, I read about a book a week and include many political philosophies, it just so happen to be the latest thing on the shelf. He is a follower of Austrian economics and talks about it for a good bit in his book. So we're not just looking at the world of economics, or history - it is relevant and discussed today. I just worry that we're swinging the other way too quickly since we're all worked up. Morphh ^(talk) 16:48, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, seems like we are at an impasse here. Some (I'm guessing Morph, II, Visionthing, & SlamDiego) would argue that this statement goes too far, others (probably most of the rest of us?) that it doesn't go far enough. Can we just split the difference and call it ok? Morph, what should be changed to make you happy? Cretog, I think its actually better to have a statement that's non-specific to the Austrian school. It also gives us a guideline to use when addressing other minority views, like Marxian economics, anti-globalists, post-Keynesians etc. lk (talk) 08:14, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I think #1 is fine, #2 I would remove "i.e." and everything after, #3 is fine, #4 has a couple issues. In #4, if the pov is moved to a separate article, a summary (or brief summary) of the pov should usually be maintained in the main article (with a wikilink or tag) to reference the pov. I'm not sure about moving it to a separate section as you should try to keep arguments together on a particular issue, unless the sections themselves are part of the arguments for an overall topic. In the end, I'm not sure we're doing anything or should do anything that isn't just repeating policy. It's not appropriate to set a global weight as weight is dependent on the article topic. I haven't yet seen the list of articles that we believe give the undue weight to make my own judgment as to the overall issues we face. Articles that have issues, I haven't yet seen where policy was not enough to put them in proper context. If disputes arise to the context within policy, are we taking it to the next level of dispute resolution or getting others involved from the project to weigh in and form a consensus on the content? Maybe all this has been done and I'm out of the loop on it, but that context hasn't been sufficiently presented here. I feel like we're trying to specify our own "niche" policy for Austrians (or other minority groups), and that doesn't seem proper to me. I've been in RFC discussions on tax protester arguments where we agreed certain content that was repeatedly being entered by tax protesters in many articles was inappropriate, and we came together to make a ruling on it. That would be acceptable to me, but outlining general policy rules specific to a group doesn't seem right. At this point, I agree they are minority viewpoints and should be treated as such per current policies. If we identify articles that need work, I'll help enforce those policies. I can agree to some self-specified guidelines if we feel this will provide us an overview to quickly assess an article that needs work, but IMO we'll need to fall back to Wikipedia policy when we address content changes. Morphh ^(talk) 13:41, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

With all that said, if we make those changes to #2 and #4, I would be ok with referencing this in a FAQ or as a talk notice on highly contentious articles. Morphh ^(talk) 14:27, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

2. According to undue weight, a minority viewpoint should be proportional to that viewpoint's prominence in reliable sources.

4. Correctly referenced point of view statements should usually not be removed from Wikipedia. However, if necessary to retain proper weight within an article, the view can be briefly summarized and the details can be moved to a separate article that more directly addresses the minority viewpoint.

I think this would fine to include as a notice if we choose to go that direction. Morphh ^(talk) 14:36, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

The list, 'peer-reviewed journals and books from university presses, and university-level textbooks' is straight out of WP:SOURCES, you surely can't be arguing against repeating WP policy? Or do you think we should also include the rest of the list, 'magazines, journals, and books from respected publishing houses, and mainstream newspapers'? lk (talk) 17:36, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, don't filter the list - it presents as bias selection. What we define as a reliable source in Wikipedia policy is what we define as a reliable source. To that, I don't see a need to give examples since the wikilink to a reliable source is provide and unfiltered. Morphh ^(talk) 18:34, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Is it not true that many original Austrian School contributions to economics are today part of mainstream economics? What percentage of mainstream economics is actually originally from the Austrian School? If this percentage is, for example, 60% of current mainstream economics, how is this to be reflected in the article on inflation? Or is this really irrelevant? Is this percentage known? I am not an Austrian. SystemicDestruction (talk) 22:32, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it makes sense to talk about percentages. Let me make this more concrete with some examples. The Austrian, Carl Menger, invented the concept of marginal change and marginal utility in the 1870s. Marginalism long ago became mainstream economics. But this adoption by the mainstream was also influenced by other economists, such as Jevons and Walras, who simultaneously and independently developed the same (or closely related) concepts. Menger is distinguished from the others by his emphasis on the discrete instead of continuous change. Most mainstream economists would see this as a dead issue. The mainstream turned away from the differential calculus to more set-theoretic and topological arguments after WW II. How this should be reflected in wikipedia entries is not clear to me. At any rate SlamDiego has written Marginal utility and related entries to promote an arguably non-notable Austrian interpretation (McCulloch 1997) of utility, as well as some of his other opinions.

Hayek's 1920s and 1930s development of the notion of equilibrium through time is another Austrian contribution. Hayek, through his work at the LSE, influenced J. R. Hicks' Value and Capital, one of more important works in the development of mainstream post-war economics. Kenneth Arrow, at least, was influenced by Hicks in the development of Arrow-Debreu General Equilibrium theory. More recent ideas along these lines include temporary and momentary equilibria (Grandmont 1977) and Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibria (DSGE), as used today in mainstream economics. Hayek's influence here may not be known among practitioners working with the later ideas, although Garegnani (1976), for example, points out that influence.

I happen to think both these ideas, utility and very short-run (intertemporal and temporary) General Equibrium lie in ruins - see Petri (2004) on the latter, but that's as may be. -- RLV 209.217.195.61 (talk) 11:17, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Dallas Fed on Mises and Hayek. -- Vision Thing -- 12:20, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

An attempt at more general principles

Okay, there's evidently insufficient support for the bell, book, and candle. So how about first some general principles. And, if these can garner wider support, then application can be discussed to specific schools o' thought.

1. The notability of a school of economic thought arises from multiple things, including
   • historical and present representation in academia;
   • historical and present relationship to public policy, as motivator or as rationalization;
   • historical and present relationship to popular opinion.

   None of these things should be ignored, but neither should they ever be confused one with another.

2. A school of thought that is not orthodox — either because it is heterodox or because there simply is no orthodoxy — should never be presented as if it is.
3. A school of thought may be relatively over-represented as a result of its having an over-large absolute presence, or as a result of other schools having an inadequate absolute presence. That is to say that there may just be too much about one school, or there may be too little about another. In the former case, the absolute presence of the over-represented school should be pared back, but in the latter case more work should instead be put into fleshing-out presentation of other schools.
4. The reader should never be left less able to understand a school of thought as a result of the presentation in an article. The conceptions and models of a school of thought should not be represented as definitive unless they are the most general.
5. Almost always, the history of presently relevant ideas is of less significance than the ideas themselves, and in no case should the principal exposition of those ideas be obscured by historical discussion. Accordingly, historical discussion should typically be placed in a separate section or in a separate article, rather than being integrated with the rest of the exposition.

—SlamDiego_←T 05:41, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Economics article ratings template broken?

When I click on a number in the economics article ratings, I get a blank page, even for ones with large n that are unlikely to move. What gives? Pdbailey (talk) 23:02, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

• post a link here. I've been fiddling with them today but didn't notice a problem yet. Protonk (talk) 23:10, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

try Category:Start-Class,_High-importance_Economics_articles, there should be 125 articles in there. Pdbailey (talk) 23:14, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

You're absolutely right. I'm going to try and unfutz that. Thanks. Protonk (talk) 23:15, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Looks like the old template populated those categories automatically. I just reverted my changes to the template. Protonk (talk) 23:27, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

okay, it is still broken! Pdbailey (talk) 23:32, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

try purging the page and refreshing the cache? Protonk (talk) 23:35, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I just did that...not sure what to tell you. I might have done it. I might not have. The last update to that table was before I changed the template... Protonk (talk) 23:38, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that was it. A purge on this project page did not update the table, do you have to do that manually? Pdbailey (talk) 23:48, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

No, I just realized that the old template was populating the categories and the new one didn't. For come reason (probably a job queue thing), category listing and population takes a REAL backseat to other jobs, so it may take 5-10 minutes for a change (that repopulates those categories) to have an effect. Protonk (talk) 23:53, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

The problem is {{WPBannerMeta}}. I don't believe it allows combined class and importance templates, which we have been using on the old template. Most banners have separate cats. I asked on the banner talk page to see if it's possible. The assessment table gets refreshed every few days by a bot. --Patrick (talk) 01:39, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

hey, is it possible that the margins could be linked? so that I could see all stubs or all low importance articles? Pdbailey (talk) 04:08, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

The margins ARE linked; all stub economics articles are here. Gary King (talk) 04:12, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, it's not the margins, but the actual text. Can the margins be linked too (admittedly redundantly). Pdbailey (talk) 04:12, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Taxation

As noted above by Protonk, Taxation is one of a number of problematic articles. However, it doesn't look to me to be beyond salvage. If we cut the anarchocapitalist and single-taxer nonsense down to a couple of paras and improved the section on optimal tax theory, the article would at least be useful to readers. Is anyone interested in giving this a try? As encouragement, I'd note that big improvements at Inflation seem to be holding for the moment.JQ (talk) 08:10, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see anything problematic. What section are you thinking is the worst? II | (t - c) 19:33, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Primarily Taxation#Morality. This gives a vast amount of weight to WP:FRINGE views. But the article also needs a lot of reorganisation. JQ (talk) 19:43, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Certainly could use reorganization. The morality section spans 4 short sentences. I hardly see how that is undue weight, and I don't think the morality objection to taxation is fringe. Have you heard of Robert Nozick? Not only is the view supported by some philosophers (the morality "experts", for whatever that's worth), but it is heavily supported among the populace of the US and moderately supported among other English-speaking countries. That's why we re-elected Bush, despite his tax breaks for the rich -- because taxing people differently is seen as "unfair". That's why the rich retain so much wealth. II | (t - c) 20:12, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see much of a problem with it. Those views are as old as taxation itself, and will likely never go away. Morality of taxation is always of significant dispute in the field, particularly when it is used to play class warfare and wealth redistribution. Revolutions and wars have been fought over it, politicians are elected on it. It does no good to dismiss these views and exclude them. It could use some work and cleanup but I don't think it is out of place or given any large amount of undue weight. Morphh ^(talk) 20:36, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I have to go with Morphh here, the emphasis and presentation need a bit of NPV work, but it's more or less OK. Certainly much better than some other pages we need to fix. lk (talk) 21:04, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm working on it now. I'll probably merge everything into one "Morality" section that is two or three paragraphs. Morphh ^(talk) 21:09, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Is Universal Product Code in your project's scope?

An IP user has recently added your project's banner to Talk:Universal Product Code, along with several others and other talk page banners. If this article is really in your project's scope, please rate it; otherwise please remove the banner. Thanks! Anomie⚔ 21:25, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I found a flyer that says that these UPC codes are the Mark of the Beast, so maybe these need a Religion and Theology tag. ;-) But I don't think that they need an econ tag. —SlamDiego_←T 23:24, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Looks like it has been removed; I agree with removing it. Gary King (talk) 22:28, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I had been bold enough to remove it. —SlamDiego_←T 19:44, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Natural capital

Let me repeat this information as no one seems interested in it. I found this article which does not seem to be categorized and it was a total odd looking mess until making it into something. I tracked down what it is about and added sections and information to it. Natural capital It still is just mostly thrown together information .. but I tried to organize it as to topic .. subject.. etc. Check out the page history.... It has not been edited very many times.. and try to figure out where this information should be categorized (Economics, I think under energy economics or such related.. Ecological economics)... so other people can find it or work on it. It might be a good idea to take a look at the edits previous to my working on it... I was surprised to see that such a mess was even there. As near as I can tell this is an economics article... Classification? skip sievert (talk) 01:30, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

A bit raggedly, but on the whole tolerable. Unfortunately, we have higher priority articles that are in worse shape. lk (talk) 14:13, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Another Austrian school issue

See Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#lewrockwell.com. The site, owned by Lew Rockwell, is cited or linked in 350 articles. I can't possibly imagine that this could be within the realm of its importance in the field. Please give your thoughts at the reliable sources noticeboard. Protonk (talk) 17:08, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

This link in fractional-reserve banking is exactly the sort of thing we need to agree is just not appropriate. EconomicsGuy (talk) 18:18, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm a potential asset to this wikiproject, but...

Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics has several mathematicians who dominate their niche of wikipedia. I am curious about how this economics-portal is managed? I would imagine that this has the most problems with spam. I have noticed lots of inaccuracies in finance related articles. Is there some statistics I can review? Such as an average of # of edits per day per article under our scope? I liked the table of breakdown of articles which are featured/good/etc... I'm interested in helping to improve some of the articles, but I want to get a feel first about this genera of wikipedia. I was trying to answer a question on the ref-desk, and the original poster was rightfully confused because our own articles are inconsistent, and sometimes just plain inaccurate.

here's the whole story about how APR is one just example. The finance articles may be on the same level as the average wikipedia article, but since I have a strong and powerful education in finance, I may be disproportionately aware of needed improvements. Anyways, I've ran into some bad experiences in wikiproject molecular bio, which could have been avoided if I knew their M.O. ahead of time, and simply opted out.

Thanks and look forward to a response.

I was impressed that the article on Beta actually talked about the R^squared, something my professor didn't teach the other half of Beta as a heuristic for risk. Sentriclecub (talk) 17:13, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

• It isn't really, managed, per se. You are welcome to help us out anywhere you like. I suspect you will run into conflicts with editors who have been the sole keepers of various articles for some time, but there is (as you can see above) very little strict project-wide management). Might I suggest that you start by revamping Mathematical finance (which is currently just a list) and help me improve Mathematical economics? I would be ecstatic for the help. Protonk (talk) 17:16, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Welcome aboard, we could use the help as many of our Wikiproject articles are a mess. Probably the best way to help is to scan the stub- and start-class articles for topics that you are knowledgeable about and just dive in. Be bold, as often the articles are in such sad shape that you can't help but improve them. If you run into any conflicts, just leave it alone and try another article, there's no point getting too involved with a particular article, as we have so many that need to be looked at. Or, if you feel that there's someone who's pushing a particular POV that's just wrong, drop a note here, and someone will look at it. best, lk (talk) 18:02, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm not really interested in expanding stubs-its kinda like using a television for a nightlight. I think first priority is to collaborate and make sure all of our core articles are error free. I am willing and ready to start on the Mathematical finance and also Fundamental theorem of arbitrage-free pricing which is the first link on mathematical finance.

Secondly, I've noticed Annual percentage rate is not claimed by any wikiproject. Can we grab it? The first sentence is already prone to having people miseducated. Annual percentage rate (APR) is an expression of the effective interest rate the borrower will pay on a loan which is accurate, but completely misleading, because the APR is not an effective interest rate. It is an expression for one, but not one itself.

I'd really appreciate to have a fellow collaborator since I work best as a team player. Plus, I'm still not confidently familiar with how wikipedia runs. Even today, I had to ask if it is okay to correct someone's answer at the ref-desk, or if the guideline about never changing someone's post would outweigh the original asker's benefit. As a businessman, you look at guidelines as a means to an end, that is to use guidelines to facilitates goals, not the goal of to strictly follow guidelines. if a rule prevents you from improving the wikipedia reference desk, then ignore it however most people lose focus on improving wikipedia, which is what I want to do. I also believe that I'm outnumbered. Most wikipedians start out as philanthropists, then develop a feeling of ownership of wikipedia, and then make fewer and fewer edits to articles, and more involvement trying to contribute their wisdom to making wikipedia better, but not necessarily the content. Its these people that I don't work well with. I only care about one thing, and that is to put the “Big Three” textbook publishers: Thomson Learning, Pearson Education and McGraw-Hill Education, all out of business. I don't want to put them out of business, but I would have like wikipedia to have excellent and arguably perfect content. I'm all about content, content, content; but I always fear being ran off by someone with hive mind, who doesn't truely care about content. Sentriclecub (talk) 19:20, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Economics

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:18, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

History of Money and Banking in the United States

I would be grateful for others to look at History of Money and Banking in the United States. The article is about a book, but I believe the title is misleading, implying the article is in fact about the history of money and banking in the U.S. Grateful for comments there/here.

Note that this is related to the discussion above about Austrian school, as the article effectively directly plugs the von Mises institute and Rothbard books (in or out of proportion to notability?). As far as I can tell, at least one of the contributors has a conflict of interest as a former (current?) employee of the institute.

This (to me) is a fairly clear example of advocacy, and as Cretog8 notes above, the amount of direct linking (bordering on linkspamming) to the Mises institute is out of all proportion.--Gregalton (talk) 05:07, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Honestly most of those books on that list are probably not notable. we could really just merge the books into a list, but I'm not really interested in stirring up that hornet's nest. On a related note, I can't help but notice that rothbard is on out Wikipedia 0.7 list of topics...oh well. Protonk (talk) 05:11, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I think much of the problem could be solved by simply retitling the article to "... (book)". Although, it would help if the article demonstrated notability. It might be notable, but the article only gives evidence that it's notable to the Mises institute itself. CRETOG8(t/c) 05:23, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Do we really have that low of an opinion of our readers? Wikilinks to it should always be italicized. Once the link is clicked, any literate reader should not be confused, as the first sentence states that it is a book. I see no problem with the article. The relatively large amount of Austrian information on Wikipedia doesn't reflect badly on them. It reflects badly on the mainstream people for not writing enough and even attempting to communicate with the outside world. And the idea that the article about the book "plugs the von Mises institute and Rothbard books" out of proportion to notability ... ? The topics are closely connected. II | (t - c) 05:42, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I uploaded the book cover and added the book infobox to the article, which should help identify what the article is about. If further identification is needed, than I would go with Cretog's suggestion of adding "(book)" to the end of the article name. Morphh ^(talk) 13:05, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Criticism of ...

As a result of discussions above, I've run across a number of articles with titles of the form "Criticism of ...", for example Criticism of fractional-reserve banking and Criticism of the Food and Drug Administration. Both of these seem to me to be pretty clear examples of WP:POVFORK, and I doubt that articles of this kind are going to be useful in economics.JQ (talk) 07:37, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Even if the content itself is not a POVFORK (which it does appear to be), this is also an example of Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Article_naming that should be corrected if not merged. Morphh ^(talk) 13:16, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree. The defining feature of a POV fork is that it covers the exact same subject in a twisted manner. These don't -- they cover an aspect of the subject which wouldn't really fit within the narrative of the main article. It's a notable position which has existed for a while. Read further down: Wikipedia:POVFORK#Article_spinouts_-_.22Summary_style.22_articles and Articles with a POV. II | (t - c) 17:16, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I tend to agree with ImperfectlyInformed on this one. Although I totally disagree with it, it's a notable position, and a valid article. The only thing we should do is to make sure the article itself remains WP:NPV, and that arguments against the position are adequately represented in the article. lk (talk) 17:30, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm in the same boat. the "criticism" wording doesn't make it a POV fork. If the material in there is important and can't be covered appropriately because of size or weight considerations, a breakout criticism section is reasonable. If anything, we should be less restrictive than the BLP people, who tend to allow it there. Protonk (talk) 17:48, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Business and economics portal

Just a friendly reminder that if you come across any good articles that deserve to be recognized, please suggest them at suggestion page. The same goes for images, economies, and quotes. Thanks! --Patrick (talk) 03:19, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

New article for Featured Article drive?

Hey all. Should we think about picking a new article for our next Featured Article drive or should there be a new attempt at getting Adam Smith up to GA status. Or both? --Patrick (talk) 03:00, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd say stick with Adam Smith. We gotta finish one before we move on to another, or else we'll just set a bad precedent for ourselves of continuously jumping from one to the other. Gary King (talk) 03:06, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

As the dastardly reviewer who failed to list Adam Smith, I say stick with that. There are still plenty of outstanding issues from that GA review not to mention the changes to the "legacy/criticism" bit which occurred late into the review, but the distance between that article and a GA is honestly not far. After that there are some content areas to be worked on there (mainly smith's writing that wasn't Wealth of Nations or Moral Sentiments), but the process won't be painful. Protonk (talk) 03:26, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Gary is correct. Unschool (talk) 05:38, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

To Partick's thought, I wouldn't mind having additional goal articles because the Adam Smith article has advanced past my expertise on the subject. It seems to need a subject matter expert and I don't feel I can contribute much to it any longer. Morphh ^(talk) 12:32, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The Adam Smith article is pretty good now. Now it reflects some actual context of Smith in the scheme of history as to his legacy... whereas previously, it looked like an advertisement for the believers in free markets. We have seen, recently... the last gasp of the belief that the way to secure prosperity in our political price system is to let free markets rip (my opinion). Right now thanks to J.Q. and others, the legacy section is a great overview of Smith ...historically, and looking back from now. Also the perpetuation of the father stuff is toned down... to cited as... instead of urban myth style perpetuating Smith as the Big Daddy.

Mentioning Smith as also in some ways the father of Communism indirectly is also now in the article... and that previous oversight is now corrected. Really the Smith article looks good now... except it is still harping on free markets and capitalism in the lead... which in my opinion, that should not really be there, as any one can claim Smith for any thing.

The lead: Adam Smith is known for his explanation of how rational self-interest and competition, operating in a social framework depending on adherence to moral obligations, can lead to economic prosperity and well-being. His invisible hand metaphor, which he used to describe this process, has gained widespread use in the discussion of free markets. Smith's work helped create the modern academic discipline of economics and provided one of the best-known rationales for free trade.

This still is presenting a pov opinion. that is not so well rounded to subject. The last two sentences are basically opinion... that is given without context or explanation or explaining another view point... that could be just about the opposite of the opinion given. But... since Smiths work is so open to interpretation... almost any one, can find any thing in it. At least now the Legacy section, neutralized a little, the fantastic claims in the lead... but the lead still seems off. Also there should still be a word in there about Smith seemingly being oblivious, to the industrial revolution going on around him. skip sievert (talk) 13:58, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Morph made my point far better then I did. We could start the process of voting for a new article, which will take a week of voting, while at the same time, have some people working on Adam Smith. --Patrick (talk) 15:12, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I still don't like that idea. I'm by no means a an expert on Adam Smith, but I can still contribute by doing some research from library books or online. If we have some experts staying on one article and the rest who move from one article to the next, then eventually wouldn't we have people just continuously hopping from article to article since once an article is almost GA- or FA-level, then it will really require some expertise? Anyways, if you really want to, we already have results at WP:ECON/FAD so there isn't much need for a new poll. Let's finish up the items on that page first before moving on to new things, so that we don't always have a new vote for new articles to work on. Gary King (talk) 16:32, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Is citing research that contradicts a claim made by a group WP:SYN, if the research does not explicitly refer to the group?

Last week, I got into an edit dispute with Visionthing over including the statement "researchers have found that economies have experienced less severe boom-bust cycles after World War II, since central banks have started using monetary policy to stabilize economies" in the article on Austrian Business Cycle Theory. The statement itself is properly sourced, but Visionthing reverted me claiming that the statement is WP:SYN since the papers do not directly refer to Austrian Business Cycle Theory. In turn, I argued that since the article makes a claim about business cycles, mainstream research on business cycles is obviously relevant.

I took it to the OR noticeboard, where a lively dispute currently rages over the topic. If you have an opinion on this issue, you may want to head over and add to the discussion there. lk (talk) 10:57, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Austrian POV pushing at Community Reinvestment Act

Unfortunatly, there's some Austrian POV pushing and BLP smearing going on there, and we need more eyes on this article. I'm guessing that Ron Paul's blaming the subprime meltdown on Clinton and the lending to urban poor has gotten this article some unneeded attention. Not a very important article in the larger scheme of things, but timely, as the subprime crisis and the US elections will bring many eyes in. Appreciate it if people can drop by once in a while. Thanks lk (talk) 17:30, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

There's a good argument to be made that government policy encouraged the subprime crisis through Fannie/Freddie. CRA might be involved, but the evidence so far seems slim, and is based mainly on the opinions of a few Austrian economists. The key question is whether the non-CRA-regulated mortgage brokers, who did over half of these mortgages, able to send their mortgages to CRA institutions and thereby improve the latter's score? So far we've got no evidence that says the CRA institutions could take these mortgages from brokers to increase their CRA score. II | (t - c) 04:29, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I've put it on my watchlist.JQ (talk) 05:54, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

There's no Austrian POV pushing anymore, however, the article is fast becoming a coatrack for the neo-con/libertarian theory that the current financial crisis is caused by wrongheaded government regulations – specifically the GSE's and the CRA. Material was being inserted that appeared to me as either trivia, or to have no direct connection to the article topic. However, over the last few days it's become clear that the information was inserted to either assert guilt by association or to imply the particular synthetic argument that CRA and the GSEs were largely responsible for the current financial crisis. Would appreciate some eyes on the article, and a brief look into the page history to see if I'm right or wrong about this. LK (talk) 17:33, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. The Big Picture blog had some extensive analysis with the primary source being the Fed, so you may want to check there for a good source. See The Big Picture.--Gregalton (talk) 19:28, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Possible WP:OR in diagrams at Subprime mortgage crisis

Reported here. Someone with more expertize might want to take a look. VG ☎ 03:03, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Request for peer review on Mathematical Economics

Mathematical economics just got promoted to GA and I was hoping to get a really harsh peer review before I try to see when I can bring it to FA. I had it in my userspace for a while but to be honest I ran out of steam trying to cover the topic comprehensively. The talk page contains (As do commented out sections of the article) structure to expand the article beyond what it is now: a history of the discipline. So. If you are worried that Adam Smith is more biography than econ article or you have some criticism to add, please do so. And don't let the title dissuade you. I'm not a mathematician and I haven't written the page for one. Protonk (talk) 18:51, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Selected economy for October

I'm having trouble finding a well done article for next month's selected economy. Please suggest an article for come across any good articles. Thanks so much. --Patrick (talk) 22:31, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

• Virtual economy. :) Protonk (talk) 22:36, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Haha, good enough for me. --Patrick (talk) 23:09, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

The Shock Doctrine book article crit section

Hi, there's a discussion section going on at the talk section of the article on Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine (here), discussing the criticism section. As the book and its criticisms are Econ related, I'd like people with good background on this to help make the section NPOV and remove all wp:UNDUE weight which may exist. Thanks to any who can help. NJGW (talk) 02:08, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Austrian POV Pushing On Entry On Neoclassical Economics

Over on the Neoclassical economics entry, a dogmatic editor is translating Stigler's statement that "There is no unamity regarding 'neo-classical' theory" into "Stigler ... presumed that significant disputes among marginalist schools had been largerly resolved". Very odd. Here's a diff: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neoclassical_economics&diff=241904791&oldid=241487764. Here's more context for Stigler's statement: http://robertvienneau.blogspot.com/2008/09/stigler-on-neoclassical-economics.html. -- RLV 209.217.195.64 (talk) 00:23, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Personally attacking me as dogmatic doesn't help your case, Robert.

The discussion (in which Robert has simply chosen not to participate) is at Talk:Neoclassical economics#OR/fn.

The full quote from Stigler is thus: “There is no unanimity regarding ‘neo-classical’ theory, but on the other hand, the divergences of opinion between competent students are certainly less than at any time since Mill.” (Underscore mine.)

Finally, I would ask Robert to halt his programme of seeking traffic and acolytes by linking to his 'blog. (Usually or always, any relevant material can be reproduced or restated on the Wikipedia talk page.) When last I knew, the Wikipedia programmers had lazily adopted a policy of blocking edits to talk pages that had recognized spam links on them, even if the link predated the edit and were to a different section, and the diagnostic does a poor job of explaining the problem to a hapless editor (who may, in any case, not know how to hunt-down and excise such links). —SlamDiego_←T 01:15, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Economic lists

Seems to me that we have too many lists/outlines (non-articles) that cover economics. JEL classification codes, Topic outline of economics, List of economics topics. Thoughts on merging some of these? JEL class could be a main section in the outline of topics or something... I'm not even sure what purpose "List of economic topics" serves that should not be handled by good categorization in Category:Economics. Morphh ^(talk) 13:29, 07 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree on getting rid of list of economic topics. I hadn't seen the topic outline before and I really like it but i'm not sure if it should be here. Maybe Wikiversity? --Patrick (talk) 14:38, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

The topic outline page is more or less a standard page type; have a look at this. Gary King (talk) 15:00, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Good article drive?

Who is interested in bringing subprime mortgage crisis up to good article status? 69.140.152.55 (talk) 13:32, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Not a good choice. Considering how hot the topic is right now, it'll be the victim of many drive by edits. I'ld be happy to see it free of obvious POV bias. LK (talk) 14:46, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with LK. It's way too soon for good article status. Perhaps The Great Depression is worth working on, though? ;) Gary King (talk) 15:11, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Interest rate

For the last two years or so, this article was a redirect to Interest, despite being substantially different. I was trying to find information out about interest rates, given how much they are in the news at the minute, and couldn't find what I was after in the interest article. So, I undid the redirect, and interest rate is now its own article. It could do with some concerted attention from some experts, though, so I wondered if it would fall under the aegis of this WikiProject. Something like List of national interest rates would be good also, but I wouldn't know where to start. Thanks. fish&karate 14:20, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I've always wondered why it isn't it's own article. Great job on that! Hopefully I'll find the time to work on that article and the list a bit. Gary King (talk) 14:53, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Gary. I added the project tag to the talk page. --Patrick (talk) 14:56, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Nicely done fish. You should join our wikiproject. LK (talk) 15:37, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like you wrote that article, fish, but it is great that you undid that ridiculous redirect. It is amazing how inefficient Wikipedia can be. II | (t - c) 07:02, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

2008–2012 Icelandic financial crisis

The article, especially its "Causes" section, could do with a few more economics-knowledgeable eyes on it, as well as an assessment of its current quality. Thanks in advance for any helpers! Physchim62 (talk) 12:44, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

More Idiosyncratic Austrian POV Pushing at Neoclassical economics

SlamDiego, who defines disagreement with himself as vandalism, continues to pretend that Stigler's statement, "There is no unanimity regarding 'neo-classical' theory, but on the other hand, the divergences of opinion between competent students are certainly less than at any time since Mill" translates to neoclassical economists "presumed that significant disputes amongst marginalist schools had been resolved." Why he does not want the entry to state that "neoclassical economics" refers to "many others" than Menger, Jevons, J. B. Clark, and "economists in the tradition of Marshall" is something of a mystery. (Stigler says the theory has been advanced by "a host of economists too numerous even to mention".) Anyways, what noticeboard does one go to to annouce that an editor has three reverts? -- RLV 209.217.195.97 (talk) 06:35, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

RLV, you should register for an account. It will make communication easier. In order to discourage edit warring, the 3 reverts rule (WP:3RR) states that editors should not revert a page more than 3 times within 24 hours. This applies to all parties concerned. However, the proper way to resolve an edit dispute is not to wikilawyer about it, but to try to hash it out in the talk page. If agreement cannot be reached, then a request for more eyes can be made, either here, or by making a Request for Comment by following the instructions at WP:RFC. LK (talk)

Lawrence, thanks for the advice. SlamDiego, who spends his time arguing that role is properly spelled with an accent and that footnotes cannot include quotes from sources, has exhausted my patience for discussion. -- RLV 209.217.195.97 (talk) 06:51, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Robert, you're of course not simply inserting the “many others” but repeatedly trying to erase the point that Stigler (as shown by the reference) operated on the presumption that differences were largely resolved. ([13][14][15]) I have no particular objection to noting that the term “neo-classical” was used by Hicks and Stigler to economists besides those explicitly noted. It can be stated without erasing the point that you keep erasing (Voila!) — as you knew at the outset. The erasure was your principal objective, as shown in earlier discussion on this page and by your edit summaries ([16][17]). I'm thus perfectly fine with your taking this matter to a noticeboard, such as “Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents”. (As LK notes, 3RR hasn't been violated and otherwise would have been violated by you, but in any case the 3RR noticeboard is “Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR”.) And trolling here offers you a dubious cost/benefit ratio.

Also, again, please stop trying to use Wikipedia to drive traffic to your 'blog. —SlamDiego_←T 08:08, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I think the above adequately illustrates why I don't want to enter into more discussion with SlamDiego. -- RLV 209.217.195.71 (talk) 11:13, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

And, with your latest edit to the article, you again demonstrate that erasure was your objective. —SlamDiego_←T 11:26, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I also note that Robert has again falsified a quotation. He quotes the passage in the article as saying “presumed that significant disputes amongst marginalist schools had been resolved” when it instead has always said “presumed that significant disputes amongst marginalist schools had been largely resolved” (underscore here added). In earlier discussion here, Robert truncated the part of the Stigler quote where Stigler wrote “the divergences of opinion between competent students are certainly less than at any time since Mill”. Anyone attempting to judge the merits of the passage should double check its actual words against the actual words of Stigler. —SlamDiego_←T 12:54, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Business and economics portal

Just a friendly reminder that if you come across any good economics or business articles that deserve to be recognize, please suggest them at suggestion page. The same goes for images, economies, and quotes. Thanks! --Patrick (talk) 13:17, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Hoover index and Robin Hood index

As those are different indices, I split them into different articles. Please check, wether the links to the WikiProject Economics are correct. --DL5MDA (talk) 07:17, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Wage slavery

Wage slavery is currently tagged as an A-Class article of high importance. In my view this article has too many problems to be rated that way, but I could be wrong. I would appreciate if someone is willing to take a look at it. -- Vision Thing -- 18:16, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree. In fact, I don't think the topic even merits High importance -- this is mid-importance at best. CRGreathouse (t | c) 22:53, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Evolutionary economics

hi, i ´ ll redevelop the article in one of my international university-wikipedia-projects (examples, results last semester on de.WP) i´ve an author (professor of evolutionary economics), a reviewer (professor of international macroeconomics and transformation economics) and an other reviewer to balance the personal bias for the text on de.WP. i need a well-informed reviewer furthermore on en.WP. is it possible to nominate a Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics-candidate for this job?, best regards --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 19:26, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Heterodox economics and others

I'd appreciate it if some people here could take a look at Heterodox economics and some related articles. We have one editor who is keen to push the view that ideas like Technocracy and Thermoeconomics are among the most important challenges to Mainstream economics. While I'm a mainstream type, I think I have a better feel than many for what's going on in heterodox circles and this doesn't seem to me to be right - Marxist, Austrian, post-Keynesian and institutionalist ideas are a lot more important. But I don't want to get into an edit war, so I thought I'd ask for others to take a look. As an aside, it appears that a lot of the Thermoeconomics article was created by an editor User:Sadi Carnot subsequently banned for POV pushing and sock puppetry. JQ (talk) 02:33, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

I second that thought, although I'm timid to participate too vigorously in restraining the technocracy and related stuff because personal heat has run high in the past. CRETOG8(t/c) 03:15, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

This may be an area you are unfamiliar with Mr Quggin. Energy economics is mainstream to heterodox, and deleting sourced information that is pertinent to understanding this viewpoint is contraindicated for an understanding of the subject. Edits which are relevant to the topic and supported by reliable sources are most proper. It is probably not a good idea to make a blanket (and false) POV accusation simply because you disagree with what a source says, or if the source does not agree with your knowledge, and or view point, being steeped in mainstream as you say above... is a possibility. Focus on the content, and look at the referencing. Please do not attempt guilt by association to another user. The Thermoeconomics article is there for a reason because of its historical and modern reference points.

Here is an example of this issue currently

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/technocrats.htm

Here is a modern and historical example of these issues http://www.eoearth.org/article/Biophysical_economics

Biophysical economics is pretty much another name for Energy economics and thermoeconomics.

Thank you for taking the time to explore and understand this material. It is not in competition to mainstream economics. It is something different. In that sense Energy economics is notable, as it is based in Thermodynamics. This is the reason Ecological economics has adopted ideas connected with it. skip sievert (talk) 02:43, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm familiar with the way the term "energy economics" is normally used and it bears little relation to what you describe. Energy economics is a subfield of economics similar to agricultural economics or labor economics though, as with these examples, every subfield has its claim to be special in one way or another. Unfortunately the article on energy economics is a bit of a disaster. Before wading in, I'd invite others here to comment, and see if we can organise a bit of a cleanup. JQ (talk) 11:59, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

From your reaction I do not believe you have looked at the material presented or perhaps do not understand the role and history of Energy Accounting, Bioeconomics, Natural capital, and the role it plays in this Sustainability, or the role it has played in the American landscape of debate on these issues. Also you are neglecting things as to your blanket dismissal of these issues. Georgescu-Roegen also discussed economics, and the concept of entropy from thermodynamics (as distinguished from the mechanistic foundation of neoclassical economics drawn from Newtonian physics) and did foundational work which later developed into evolutionary economics. Many aspects of his work confirmed that a different economic approach, connected with energy and environment might better serve the protection of the resource base. His work contributed significantly to bioeconomics and to ecological economics. Frederick Soddy provided much of the original conception of energy economics also. Within macroeconomics there is classical economics, Keynesian economics, the neoclassical synthesis, post-Keynesian economics, monetarism, new classical economics, and supply-side economics. Alternative developments include ecological economics, institutional economics, evolutionary economics, dependency theory, structuralist economics, world systems theory, thermoeconomics, and econophysics.

Physical scientists and biologists were the first individuals to use energy flows to explain social and economic development. Joseph Henry, an American physicist and first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, remarked that the "fundamental principle of political economy is that the physical labor of man can only be ameliorated by...the transformation of matter from a crude state to a artificial condition...by expending what is called power or energy." http://www.eoearth.org/article/Biophysical_economics -Here is a reference I hope you find interesting. http://ecen.com/eee9/ecoterme.htm and another http://telstar.ote.cmu.edu/environ/m3/s3/05account.shtml - When reading these... I am guessing that you will more fully understand this subject. Thanks... Oh Cretog... you stopped haunting my edits a while back on the advice of interested parties, and that was greatly appreciated. Please do not start again in the same way. One more thing John, you added this to the Heterodox article a while back and I did not complain because it was a fair assessment perhaps After 1945, the synthesis of Keynesian and neoclassical economics resulted in a clearly defined mainstream position based on a division of the field into microeconomics (generally neoclassical but with a newly developed theory of market failure) and macroeconomics (divided between Keynesian and monetarist views on such issues as the role of monetary policy). Austrians and post-Keynesians who dissented from this synthesis emerged as clearly defined heterodox schools. In addition, the Marxist and institutionalist schools remained active. I would suggest to you also to read more on this person, Thorstein Veblen. I hope this gives you more of a feeling for the notability and connection of energy economics and other issues that you may be unaware of, or dismissing of, as to the historical and present aspect. skip sievert (talk) 15:24, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Economic Freedom class rating

I'd appreciate it if some editors could go check out Economic Freedom's current B-ranking. It doesn't deserve a B because it's significantly lacking other notions of economic freedom--it's pretty good on the dominant idea, but that dominant idea isn't that dominant. (Most of the discussion has been moved to the archive. CRETOG8(t/c) 14:45, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I think the article looks pretty good as a B-class. I guess you're suggesting that it doesn't "reasonably cover the topic" and thus fails criterion 2 of B-class assessment (WP:ECON/A). I don't know much of the subject matter, so if you can demonstrate some things that are missing I'd be more inclined to agree with you. Hope this helps. -FrankTobia (talk) 17:01, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Yep, the article doesn't adequately cover the topic. It's tied into its POV troubles. Like "civil rights", the term "economic freedom" gets defined by people to mean whatever they think is good, so there are different ideas. Currently only one idea is presented. Besides the idea currently presented, economic freedom is associated with union strength (John L. Lewis & A. Philip Randolph), restraint of monopoly (Eleanor Roosevelt), weak intellectual property laws (Edmund Burke and slightly Milton Friedman), and lack of poverty and inequality (Amartya Sen). The empirical material on "economic freedom" as currently defined in the article is also one-sided (although my current impression is that it's the right side), presenting it as a firm positive (see [http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10849115 Economist article). Now, really I should fix the article, but I don't think my failure to do so improves the article. CRETOG8(t/c) 17:30, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Articles on John L. Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Eleanor Roosevelt and Edmund Burke don't even mention economic freedom. Off course that doesn't mean that their ideas about economic freedom are not notable, but I would appreciate if you could provide some reliable sources for that. -- Vision Thing -- 22:53, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm. I added material on Franklin D. Roosevelt and Freedom from want and you promptly deleted it. A big WP:OWN problem here, I would say.JQ (talk) 20:55, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

• I'd say this article is a good candidate to be a C class. It's not a start class, insofar as it is relatively complete and basically neutral. But it isn't a step below GA. Protonk (talk) 19:36, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

In what way do you find present content lacking? -- Vision Thing -- 22:55, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with the suggestion that it is basically neutral. The whole article is full of statements in which the WSJ/Heritage view is treated as fact. Moreover the editing of the article by -- Vision appears aimed at keeping things this way, and excluding any other view of economic freedom. This article is highly problematic, to the point where even a C class rating is questionable.JQ (talk) 20:55, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

• It strikes me as B-class. CRGreathouse (t | c) 15:09, 11 November 2008 (UTC)