The neoclassical theory of economic growth is an example of Murphy’s law: everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

Blair Fix

I’ve written a lot on this blog about the absurdity of marginal productivity theory. But I haven’t said much about the other pillar of mainstream economics: neoclassical growth theory. Today I’ll break that silence. Neoclassical growth theory is a textbook example of Murphy’s law. Everything that could go wrong with the theory
<em>
 did
</em>
go wrong.

Economic Growth Theory … Bah Humbug!

University of Glasgow

Roderic Page

> Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing
> your enthusiasm \-- Winston Churchill

I learnt today that my Elsevier Challenge entry didn\'t make the final
cut. This wasn\'t unexpected. In the interests of \"open science\"
(blame [Paulo Nuin](http://blindscientist.genedrift.org/)) here is the
feedback I received from the judges:  
  

> **Strengths**  
> [Beautiful
> presentation](http://www.slideshare.net/rdmpage/elsevier-challenge-presentation),
> [lovely website](http://iphylo.org/~rpage/challenge/www/). Page
> clearly made his case for open access to metadata/full articles in
> order to allow communities to build the tools they want. The judges
> would have enjoyed seeing more elements from the original abstract
> (tree of life). Great contribution so far to the discussion; Page made
> his point very well.  
>   
> **Weaknesses**  
> Given that no specific tool was proposed, this submission is somewhat
> out of scope for the competition. Nonetheless, in support of his
> point, Page could have elaborated on the kinds of open formats and
> standards for text and data and figures that would support integrated
> community-wide tool-building. Alternatively, if the framework and the
> displayed functionalities were to be the submission, there could have
> been more discussion of how others can integrate their plug-ins and
> make them cross-referential to the plug-ins of others. The proposal
> for Linked Data should utilize Semantic Web standards  
>   
> **Elements to Consider for Development**  
> How many, and which types of, information substrates? How much work
> for a new developer to create a new one, and to make this work? How to
> incentivize authors to produce the required metadata? Or to make the
> data formats uniform?

I think this is a pretty fair evaluation of my entry. I was making a
case for what could be done, rather than providing a specific bit of kit
that could make this happen right now. I think I was also a little
guilty of not following the \"underpromise but overdeliver\" mantra. My
[original proposal](http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/npre.2008.2217.1) included
harvesting phylogenies from images, and that proved too difficult to do
in the time available. I don\'t think having trees would have ultimately
changed the result (i.e., not making the cut), but it would have been
cool to have them.  
  
Anyway, time to stomp around the house a bit, and be generally grumpy
towards innocent children and pets. Congratulations to the ~~bastards~~
fellow contestants who made it to the next round.


I learnt today that my Elsevier Challenge entry didn't make the final cut. This wasn't unexpected. In the interests of "open science" (blame Paulo Nuin) here is the feedback I received from the judges:  I think this is a pretty fair evaluation of my entry. I was making a case for what could be done, rather than providing a specific bit of kit that could make this happen right now.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Economic Growth Theory … Bah Humbug!

Failure