For those who are impatient with modeling and prefer to strike out on their own into the richness that an uninhibited use of metaphor seems to open up, the advice is to stop and think. Are you sure that you really have such deep insights that you are better off turning your back on the cumulative discourse among generally intelligent people that is modern economics? But of course you are.

And for those, like me, who basically try to understand the world through the metaphors provided by models, the advice is not to let importan ideas slip by just because they haven’t been formulated your way. Look for the folk wisdom on clouds — ideas that come from people who do not write formal models but may have rich insights. There may be some very interesting things out there. Strangely, though, I can’t think of any.

  • Models
  • Metaphors
  • Economic Analysis and the preference for tractable problems

Development, Geography, and Economic TheoryBy Paul R. Krugman