ABSTRACT
Around 1978, the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago was having its weekly luncheon at the Episcopal Theological Seminary cafeteria. In the dismal, if brief, history of field experiments in economics, the worst case so far is described by Ziliak and Teather-Posadas. One reasonably painless way to get the price theory and the thinking-like-an-economist stright is to read Austrian economics. In a typical Kaldor-Hicks calculation, the economist Maximilano Dvorkin of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reckoned that the US, 2000–2007, lost from competition from China about 800,000 jobs. George DeMartino envisions the economics initiate taking a ceremonial oath. Economists sneer at such “mere rhetoric.” DeMartino speaks of internships, residencies, and immersions, an approach to economic science that the author old friend Richard Weisskoff of the University of Miami has long advocated in economics – and practiced.
