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A very interesting collection of interviews on game theory:
Game Theory: 5 Questions, edited by Vincent F. Hendricks & Pelle Guldborg Hansen, New York / London: Automatic Press / VIP, April 2007. ISBN 8799101343 (Buy from Amazon)
Book Description: Game Theory: 5 Questions is a collection of short interviews based on 5 questions presented to some of the most influential and prominent scholars in the field. We hear their views on game theory, its aim, scope, use, the future direction of game theory and how their work fits in these respects.
Contributors: Robert Aumann, Johan van Benthem, Cristina Bicchieri, Ken Binmore, Adam Brandenburger, Colin F. Camerer, Alan Grafen, Peter Hammerstein, Sergiu Hart, Ehud Kalai, David M. Kreps, Herve Moulin, Rohit Parikh, Ariel Rubinstein, Larry Samuelson, Thomas C. Schelling, Brian Skyrms, Robert Sugden, H. Peyton Young. Read snippets from the interviews at www.gametheorists.com.
Dubra, J. (2005) “Interview with Kenneth Arrow” MPRA Paper No. 967, Online at http:// mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/ 967/
Abstract. Arrow argues that the biggest failures of economic theory are: our failure to explain the business cycle; the missing explanations for the size of fluctuations of prices; our failure to explain the causes of growth and of the spread of innovation. He then discusses several of the existing alternatives to the rational expectations paradigm.He tells the story of his dissertation, and how Koopmans wanted to decline his Nobel Prize. Finally, he discusses health care reform, and malaria in Africa
William A. Barnett discusses the status of macroeconomics as a science in his foreword to Apostolos Serletis’s book, Money and the Economy. He says:
” Over the past 50 years, the frequency of changes in the choice of policy instruments and policy designs by the world’s central banks have been astonishing. There has not been a clear trend in any one direction, with reversions to some of the oldest approaches being common and frequent. Is this science, or is this politics? If unanticipated shocks to the economy were to cause unemployment to rise dramatically, would the currently spreading fashion of targeting solely inflation continue? If unanticipated shocks were to cause a return of double digit inflation, would the current emphasis on interest rates rather than on monetary service flows continue? Is it really true that monetary quantity is harder to measure than the “natural” or “neutral” interest rate needed in Taylor rules? Is the economy so simple that all that is needed to conduct monetary policy is an interest rate feedback rule, a Phillips curve, and perhaps one or two other equations? With all economic theory being nonlinear, is it reasonable to believe that estimated or calibrated models should be linear?2 Is it reasonable to believe that macroeconomic policy has no distribution effects, as is commonly assumed in macroeconomic models, despite the fact that most politicians advocate macroeconomic policies based precisely upon their distribution effects? If there are no such distribution effects, why is there such a strong correlation between macroeconomic policy advocacy and political party affiliation? Is it reasonable to continue to assume that monetary assets yield no own-rate of return, as assumed in many demand for money functions, despite the fact that currency and non-interestbearing demand deposit accounts have not dominated the money supply for over a half century?“
Gregory Mankiw from Harvard University offers a brief history of macroeconomics. He argues that macroeconomists have considered themselves sometimes as scientists and sometimes as engineers. He suggests that macroeconomists needs both scientists and engineers.
Mankiw, G. (2006) “The Macroeconomist as Scientist and Engineer” NBER Working Paper No. W12349 (paper at SSRN) (Downloadable version at Authors Web Site)
Ariel Rubinstein has an interesting paper on the dilemmas of economic theorists, which is available online:
Rubinstein, A. (2004) “Dilemmas of An Economic Theorist“, Econometric Society Presidential Address.
