Off to Italy

I'm off to Italy to attend a summer school in macroeconomics in the shadow of the Dolomites mountains. My blogging is likely to be intermittent for the next two weeks. I went back to my blog entry before my visit to the same summer school last year. I was apprehensive that it would be heavily modelling-based and I would feel out of place. That apprehension turned out to be true but I did not feel out of place. My research presentation raised some eyebrows but most people were gracious enough to keep their charitable opinions to themselves. The world is changing, macroeconomics is changing, and now is the not the time to scoff at new ideas and new ways of doing economics. The ground is shifting from under the feet of the orthodoxy. I, and the authors I admire, have little interest in overthrowing the orthodoxy. We want to create new knowledge rather than just refute dogma. But, if the orthodoxy comes in our way, we will fight it. I am further along in my research and more confident of its value, which is why I am quite at ease this time around.