Mathiness is a term coined by Nobel prize winner economist Paul Romer to label a specific misuse of mathematics in economic analyses. An author committed to the norms of science should use mathematical reasoning to clarify their analyses. By contrast, "mathiness" is not intended to clarify, but instead to mislead. According to Romer, some researchers use unrealistic assumptions and strained interpretations of their results in order to push an ideological agenda, and use a smokescreen of fancy mathematics to disguise their intentions.

Introduction of the term

The first usage of the term was at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in January 2015. Afterwards Paul Romer published his article ''Mathiness in the Theory of Economic Growth'' in the ''

American Economic Review The ''American Economic Review'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Economic Association. First published in 1911, it is considered one of the most prestigious and highly distinguished journals in the field of ec ...

''. The coinage mathiness follows the pattern of truthiness coined by comedian

Stephen Colbert Stephen Tyrone Colbert ( ; born May 13, 1964) is an American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host. He is best known for hosting the satirical Comedy Central program '' The Colbert Report'' from 2005 t ...

. Romer warns that mathiness is distorting economics: He specifically points to some work by

Edward C. Prescott Edward Christian Prescott (December 26, 1940 – November 6, 2022) was an American economist. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2004, sharing the award with Finn E. Kydland, "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: ...

, Robert Lucas, Jr., and Thomas Piketty, among others, and argues for a return to scientific rigor: Long before Romer, Hayek had condemned scientism, specifically in the form of the misuse of mathematics in social science, in his 1974 Nobel Prize acceptance speech on "The Pretence of Knowledge", and in his 1942 essay "Scientism and the Study of Society", later published as '' The Counter-Revolution of Science''.

Impact

Tim Harford draws a parallel to '' Politics and the English Language'' where

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalita ...

complained that politics prefers a rhetorical fog to the use of precise terms. Similarly the role of mathiness would be to hide unrealistic assumptions or pure hypothesis behind decorative math and therefore it is rather a case of politics than science. Justin Fox notes that, in his book ''Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics'', Richard Thaler documented how economists ignored real world phenomena because they did not fit into mainstream mathematical models. J. Bradford DeLong argued that mathiness means "restricting your microfoundations in advance to guarantee a particular political result and hiding what you are doing in a blizzard of irrelevant and ungrounded algebra". He argues that this is what

George Stigler George Joseph Stigler (; January 17, 1911 – December 1, 1991) was an American economist. He was the 1982 laureate in Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and is considered a key leader of the Chicago school of economics. Early life and ...

did when he rejected the inclusion of

monopolistic competition Monopolistic competition is a type of imperfect competition such that there are many producers competing against each other, but selling products that are differentiated from one another (e.g. by branding or quality) and hence are not perfec ...

in his models because in his mind it was too intellectually dangerous. The notion of imperfect competition could give an opening to interventionist "planning" while being unaware of the magnitudes of potential government failure. Therefore, requiring that models assume perfect competition as a methodological principle was a "

noble lie In politics, a noble lie is a myth or a lie typically of religious nature, knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony or advance an agenda. The noble lie is a concept originated by Plato as described in '' The Republic''. In rel ...

" to him. Paul Romer's problem is that he wants to analyze issues in which perfect competition is not leading forward but Prescott and Lucas are insisting on perfect competition as a methodological principle.

Paul Krugman Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was t ...

thinks that the debate about drawing macroeconomic conclusions from the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

is obstructed by the fact that there are economists, and whole departments that remain wholly dominated by mathiness.

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

The Case of the Missing Minsky
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References

{{Reflist, 30em Mathematical and quantitative methods (economics) Criticisms of economics

Introduction of the term

Impact

See also

References