Apropos Ajit Ranade’s thought-provoking article “Imbalance among economists” (May 24), having worked in international institutions for over 30 years, I have found that the hundreds of economists working for those organisations as well as for member-countries are armed with some kind of theory. Several of those theories turn out to be contradictory if they are reviewed over time, which is what happened in the recent global financial meltdown. Does that mean those theories should be abandoned and those economists should be blamed for having a conflict of interest? The answer to such questions is a mixed one since it depends on the ups and downs of the business cycles. Without some kind of theory, I think, we will create more chaos in the world than with the theories. With theories and related models we at least have a map in the hand to understand how we got here; not knowing how we got here can occur only in the land of chaos.
Chandrashekhar G Ranade, Washington D C
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