The Non Sequitur Award
I've long been entertained by the awards that Andrew Sullivan hands out on the Daily Dish. (If you don't follow Andrew, you can get a sense of what I'm talking about with this recent example.) I've been thinking it might be a good idea to dish out awards for the economics and development world as well. My first nominee is Myron Scholes of Long-Term Capital Management fame for a recent quote in the Economist discussing the efficient markets hypothesis:
To say something has failed you have to have something to replace it, and so far we don’t have a new paradigm to replace efficient markets.
If my car breaks down, I don't need a new one to know that the old one is broken. The Non Sequitur Award will be given for the best non sequitur or illogical statement in the world of economics. Any other nominees?
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I am not sure I agree that your metaphor accurately represents Mr. Scholes quote.
If we take your metaphor to the logical conclusion, it becomes obvious that were your car to break down, you would need some other form of transportation and thus you would use something else.
An external party would not know your car didn't work, he would just see you using something else. Thus to an observer, not a participant, this is the only way to directly measure the failure of a system.
Posted by: Wesley | Aug 27, 2009 12:12:48 PM