Re [6191]: Hi Jurriaan. It's good to hear from you. > Insofar as econometrics is concerned with the measurement of economic > trends in order to build models and extrapolate future trends (make > predictions), this is surely a worthwhile pursuit for the followers of > Marx. <snip, JL> > The point of economic > research is rather to bring theory and the data closer together, so that > theory is disciplined by the data of experience, and the study of the data > is informed and guided by theory. Econometric techniques are certainly > useful in this regard ! <snip, JL> 1) I reject the overly broad description that you give above [in the first sentence] for econometrics. 2) You have risen to the defense of what I, and some others, might call "Quantitative Marxism" Yet, I have not questioned the need for quantitative empirical analysis by Marxists -- I have questioned the use of econometrics by Marxists. Thus your reply does not seem to me to be very responsive to the issues I raised. 3) Some non-econometric quantitative methods include input-output analysis, game theory, and chaos theory. This, of course, does not suggest that there are not problems with those methods -- but the point that I want to make here is that they represent *alternative* methods for conducting empirical analysis. Indeed one might argue that they can represent *preferable* methods (e.g. in the article by J. Coakley in *Quantitative Marxism* after offering a critique of econometric models regarding stock market efficiency, the author concludes not by offering an alternative econometric formalization but rather by claiming that "...only the chaos theory approach and, to a lesser extent, the speculative bubbles model appear to capture these features within a quantitative framework. Marxian economists should take up these issues and begin to challenge the hegemony of orthodox theories of financial markets", p. 122). 3) Both micro and macro econometric studies have employed, amongst other absurdities, factor (of production) analysis (and all that implies regarding factor endowments and productivity) and production functions (imagine the audacity of anyone employing an aggregate production function after 1960!). My question concerns whether econometrics, which is after all a branch of neo-neoclassical analysis, is necessarily wedded to or can be divorced from marginalism. In solidarity, Jerry Source: Paul Dunne *Quantitative Marxism*, London, Polity Press, 1991 [ISBN 0 -7456 - 0647 - 4], Out-of-print
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