Je vous avais bien dis, mais vous vouliez pas me croire...

Economists are not boring.

C'est John Kay qui l'écrit dans le Financial Times d'hier.

[...] Few mothers are thrilled to learn their daughter is dating an economist. They expect that their prospective son-in-law (economics being the only social science in which male students greatly outnumber females) will be opinionated, boring and wrong. I dread admitting I am an economist. The cab driver quizzes you on what is going to happen to the economy, the dinner companion turns to talk to the person on the other side and the immigration officer says, with heavy sarcasm, that his country needs people like you.

There is a widespread misconception that all practitioners of the dismal science are engaged in what Paul Krugman, the Princeton economist, calls "up and down" economics – the bond yields are going up, the rupees are coming down. Economics would indeed be a dismal science if its main purpose was to forecast, inaccurately, the future course of interest rates and currencies. But few economists do this, and those who do are not well regarded, even if well paid.

The concerns of most economists are quite different. They are engaged in microeconomics, the study of households and businesses, markets and industries. Alfred Marshall, author of the first great economics text, Principles of Economics, published in 1890, defined his subject as the study of mankind in the ordinary business of life. [...Economists'] concern is not to predict the future but to interpret the world. [...] This is social science as it should be, the methods of science applied to issues of social concern.

[...] Incentives do matter, although the obsession of many economists with this idea can become tedious. It is important to stop short of the barmy extremes of some Chicago economists – who would get married to derive economies of scale in household production and commit suicide when the net present value of future utility becomes non-positive (after allowance for the value of future options to commit suicide, calculated using the Black-Scholes formula). They discredit the profession as much as the "up and down" economists do. The ordinary business of life must keep some room for love and soul.

Hein ? Il faut vous le dire comment, en chinois ?

Ben, il suffit de demander... (oui, je ne renoncerai pas à vous expliquer que je suis un MCDLP, un mec cool, quoi) :

几 个女儿学习母亲兴奋约会是一位经济学家. 他们想到他们准女婿(经济学才是社会科学,其中男生多于女生大)会自以为是、无聊和错误. 我承认我很害怕经济学家. 出租汽车司机的问答比赛你会有什么事情发生,对经济、晚餐同伴轮流交谈的人在对方和移民官说一声重,他的国家需要像你.

[edit : c'est quand même plus impressionnant quand la police chinoise est installée... et, euh, non, je ne parle pas de la police chinoise mais de la police chinoise (oui, évidemment, quelle question !).]