“General equilibrium is the statement that all the different parts of the economy influence each other, even if it’s remote, like mortgage-backed securities and their demands on automobiles.” — Kenneth Arrow
Economists rediscover Indra’s jewel net.
During my graduate school days at Berkeley, I once asked my advisor how she would characterize me. She replied, “You’re an old-world liberal. A classical liberal.” It took me several years to fully understand what she meant and how accurate her assessment was.
The dharmas (Sanatan dharma, Buddha dharma, and Jain dharma) have the concept of reincarnation. Some elements of a particular consciousness get transmitted from one life to another and are reborn in another particular consciousness. It’s possible. And there’s quite a lot of evidence that it could be true.
When I began learning about classical liberal ideas, it was as if I already knew them implicitly but was now merely learning the associated vocabulary. I conjecture that I am in some sense a reincarnated classical liberal.
My advisor was a tough woman. She had served her time in the Israeli army before getting her economics PhD. She was an expert on computable general equilibrium models. (See the notes to this post for a description of CGE models) I looked into them for a few months and concluded that they did not interest me. I was more of a price theory person, not into general equilibrium. Continue reading “General Equilibrium”
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 