THE ECONOMIST PAUL KRUGMAN SAYS that there are three types of economics. There are up-and-down economics (òstocks were up and unemployment was down todayó), airport-bookstore economics (Ten Easy Steps to Avoid Global Depression), and Greek-letter economics. Greekletter economics is the mathematical variety practised in universities and published in academic journals. And it is in serious trouble. 此資料來自 台商訊息網, 大量管理資料下載 Historically, Greek-letter economics has rewarded mathematical pyrotechnics over Tdelity to the real world. The core theories it has produced over the last few decades, such as rational expectations and general equilibrium, are mathematically elegant, but lacking in empirical validity. Joseph Stiglitz, chairman of the US President?s Council of Economic Advisors, recently observed, òAnybody looking at these models would say they can?t provide a good description of the modern world.ó* The dismal state of the dismal science matters to managers, CEOs, consultants, and business professors because much of modern thinking in management is built on a foundation of Greek-letter economics. The bad news is that this foundation is now in serious doubt; the good news is that a radically new one is starting to be put in place. Though the term paradigm shi?t is overused, the changes currently taking shape in economics justify the use of the phrase Thomas Kuhn coined to describe how scientiTc Telds enter a state of crisis and then move to a completely new way of thinking, as with the shi?t from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics. .....