The blame game continues over who is responsible for the worst recession since the Great Depression – the financiers who did such a bad job of managing risk or the regulators who failed to stop them. But the economics profession bears more than a little culpability. It provided the models that gave comfort to regulators that markets could be self-regulated; that they were efficient and self-correcting. The efficient markets hypothesis – the notion that market prices fully revealed all the relevant information – ruled the day. Today, not only is our economy in a shambles but so too is the economic paradigm that predominated in the years before the crisis – or at least it should be.
誰該對這場經濟大蕭條以來最嚴重的衰退負責，是風險管理工作糟糕透頂的金融家，還是未能阻止他們的監管者？指責遊戲仍在繼續。但經濟學界承擔的不只是一點點罪責。它提供的模型，讓監管機構安心地相信市場可以自我監管；相信模型是有效的，而且會自我修正。市場價格完全揭示了所有相關資訊的效率市場假說曾風靡一時。如今，不僅我們的經濟陷入一團糟，就連在危機發生前幾年佔據主導地位的經濟範式也是如此——或至少應該是。
