Economic Analysis | Development that Works

Economic Analysis | Development that Works: "Alfred Marshal regarded himself as “a wanderer in the land of dry facts; looking forward to a speedy return to the luxuriance of pure thought.” Keynes, in his 1924 Economic Journal  obituary,  (ungated here) thought that Marshall combined “the most essential and fundamental of the economist’s necessary gifts-he was conspicuously historian and mathematician, a dealer in the particular and the general, the temporal and the eternal, at the same time”. For Keynes, a good economist like Marshall should be “as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician.” So the key to being a good economist is to combine and blend, to synthesize.  So it’s the blending of the skills that matter most. Look at history and be rigorous.  Be pure but be ready to transact."

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