Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/History of macroeconomic thought/archive2

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Ian Rose 10:01, 4 March 2014 (UTC) [1].[reply]

History of macroeconomic thought[edit]

History of macroeconomic thought (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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Nominator(s): Bkwillwm (talk) 04:22, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about the history of macroeconomic theory. This article had previously been nominated but was rejected due to a content weight dispute that arose during the nomination. Since then, a consensus has supported the amount of attention given to heterodox economics in the article, and other disputes have been resolved. Since the last nomination, the article has passed as GA. I attempted to address some of the comments raised by the GA reviewer including adding more on economic growth. I recently went through the article to do my own CE, check links, and make other improvements. I believe this article now meets FA standards.Bkwillwm (talk) 04:22, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Overall the article is good. But from the get-go it has problems. Here are some examples: In the first sentence we have the pre-Keynesian mention of early theories, but then it goes into Keynes' thought without describing the pre-Keynesian ideas. Off-article, we have the WikiProject Econ talk page discussion – this suggests that issues need resolving. A third example involves neo-Keynesian v New-Keynesian theories – the lede does not explain these various progressions. I think a transition to a Class-A article review (perhaps supported by a Peer-review) is the next best step rather than going for a FA. – S. Rich (talk) 05:05, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You make it seem like I am jumping the gun. I don't think that's the case at all. I've been working on this article literally for years, and it's been over two years since I lasted nominated it for an FA. This article already went through a previous FA where it garnered a substantial amount of support but did not pass because there was a content dispute that has since been settled. The previous FA was preceded by a peer review, and the article was recently listed as a GA. I posted my intent to nominate this article as a FA on the WP:Economics talk page. The only feedback I received was from User:EllenCT and that discussion seemed to be resolved. You had the opportunity to discuss any changes you wanted to have made when I opened the WP:Economics discussion, but you only asked that the conversation be moved from the project page. Of course the issues you raised are worthy of discussion, but I don't see them as serious problems. They are all subjective changes that can be discussed here. The fact they weren't discussed in another forum isn't on me.--Bkwillwm (talk) 06:06, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The work you've done on the article is most commendable. (My one GA took a year & 1,000 edits to achieve, so I appreciate the great effort you've made!) My concern re the WikiProject talk page was the way in which the FA nomination turned into article improvement discussion. I'm glad you've posted the moved template and I don't blame anyone for the way the discussion evolved. I brought it up as an article Stability concern. As for the article, I don't think it passes FA muster at present. I'll try to raise more specific concerns in the next few days. – S. Rich (talk) 20:04, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Why is the article title not "History of Macroeconomics?" Yes, yes, theoretically such an article could be about the actual macroeconomic history of the world rather than scholarly models, but it's perfectly clear what it means in practice. The very first sentence after the lede says "Macroeconomics descends from two areas of research: Business cycle theory and monetary theory" rather than "Macroeconomic theories and models descend from two areas of research." SnowFire (talk) 04:44, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The distinction is between theoretical and empirical macroeconomics. The inclusion of empirical macroeconomics would cover estimation methods (such as VAR models), statistics, and other such work. The current first sentences does specify "Macroeconomic theory has its origins in the study of business cycles and monetary theory," so I don't think there's an issue there. The entire subject of macroeconomics would be very broad, and it's better to focus on the development of theory.--Bkwillwm (talk) 05:21, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that a theory-focused article could still rightly be called "History of Macroeconomics." Which is what {{Macroeconomics}} calls this article. And History of macroeconomics already redirects here. And as already noted the article itself just uses "Macroeconomics" several times. Even if someone were to write a "History of empirical macroeconomics" article, it could easily be linked to from the hatnote.
To put things another way, we have History of Buddhism, not History of Buddhist thought. Anyway, if you really really really think that readers would be confused by "History of macroeconomics," I suppose "History of macroeconomic theory" might be okay as well, and less pretentious than "thought", for all that I'd prefer a more succinct title. (That said, sorry to sidetrack your work on a sidenote, since the article title has little to do with the quality of the article - these comments should not be taken as an "oppose".) SnowFire (talk) 23:00, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The article was started as a fork of History of economic thought, and it's been focused on the scope of an "economic thought" article since then. A move to history of macroeconomics would not be appropriate. Regardless of how other subject matter is organized, focusing on history of thought is common within the field. "History of Economic Thought" (HET) is commonly used in economics and his considered a sub-discipline (see the standard JEL classifications and the New Palgrave article on HET). Even though "thought" may be more pretentious than "theory," "thought" is commonly used in the field and in other Wikipedia articles.--Bkwillwm (talk) 21:30, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ref formatting comment -- This article has a lot of harv errors. Using the given ISBNs, I've fixed some of them with this script, but there are more to do. Janssen (2008), Neo-Keynesianism (1999), Fischer (2008), Mankiw (2005), and Solow currently don't point anywhere. Regards, Ruby 2010/2013 22:34, 20 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the fixes you made and for the tip about the script. I used it to repair the remaining reference issues. Much better than going through each ref!--Bkwillwm (talk) 03:46, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You are welcome! It's a great script, but I can't take credit for it. Looks like all the harv errors have now been excised from the article. Ruby 2010/2013 15:59, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Seppi333[edit]



  • In the "External links" section, I noticed there's an awful lot of (27) external links, mostly (23) podcasts and videos, some of which are sub-categorized as part of another external link. This section seems a bit large per WP:ELPOINTS-criteria 3; perhaps cutting out the sub-categorized links would help address that criteria and WP:ELPOINTS-criteria 4.
I removed several of the links. The only sub-categorized external links that could be used as a substitute would be the the links to Nobel prizes by year. These links wouldn't give as much information about the subject matter of the material.
In addition to moving several links, I have condensed the list of Nobel prizes to one link per year. There isn't any page that collects all macro related topics, so links to individual years are appropriate.
I switched most of the images to right justification. This leads to some images being rendered below their respective sections.
  • DSGE is defined in Real business cycle theory and then redefined in New synthesis. It may be helpful to use DSGE, DSGETooltip dynamic stochastic general equilibrium, or DSGE for the first instance in the second section. Moreover, while I won't insist on it, using {{abbr}} for the first abbreviation in each paragraph will increase readability to those unfamiliar with the field.
I don't think there's a problem using the unabbreviated term a second time several sections later. I'm not completely opposed to using the abbreviation template when using DSGE, but I don't think it adds much and may be distracting.
  • Jargon terms:
  1. I would suggest cutting rephrasing this: "atheoretical[jargon] statistical models" - I have no clue what that refers to and wikt lacks a suitable definition.
I tried to explain this term parenthetically.
  1. I would suggest linking this term to wiktionary: "monetary policy had effectively been contractionary.[jargon][88]" E.g., contractionary.
I disagree with this being considered jargon. The term in economics is consistent with the general definition, and it's also introduced very early in when economics is taught. The Wiktionary "economics" definition for the term was also wrong; it does not refer exclusively to money supply.
I see where their was little context for interpreting "contractionary" and what exactly it meant in this case. I reworded the section to try and clarify this and provide context. I still don't think a Wiktionary link is appropriate since the term can be understood with a general dictionary definition.
  1. The italicized portion is oddly worded:

    Robert Solow testified before the U.S. Congress that DSGE models had "nothing useful to say about antirecession policy" because the conclusion that macroeconomic policy is impotent is built into the "essentially implausible assumptions" behind the model

I removed my couching and used Solow's quote in its original form.
  1. Indicate which financial crisis this is in relation to (or revise section heading): "Robert Gordon criticized much of macroeconomics after 1978. Gordon called for a renewal of disequilibrium theorizing and disequilibrium modeling"
  2. Similarly for: "While criticizing DSGE models, Ricardo J. Caballero argues that recent work in finance shows progress and suggests that modern macroeconomics needed to be re-centered but not scrapped.[204]"
I changed the headline. It should be very clear what financial crisis is being discussed.
Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 01:59, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Closing comment -- After remaining open six weeks and no commentary for a month I'm afraid this review has stalled, so I'll be archiving it shortly. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:08, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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