5 - Model Talk

Summary

Throughout this book, we see economic modelers distancing themselves from any explanatory power or realist intentions of their artifacts. Chapter 5 takes a closer look at such utterings as a specific kind of model talk that accompanied modeling as a practice. Frequently, such talk related to the power of mathematics as a language, centering on the greater “virility” of transparent and unambiguous mathematical methods compared to their verbal counterparts and predecessors. In contrast, I focus on instances in which economists grappled with their tricky artifacts and their messy practices. The talk surrounding Solow’s model turned it into a didactic device, a prototype for larger-scale planning models, an imagery of a world that macroeconomic management was capable of creating, and a part of a toolbox that equipped economists as “little thinkers” with technically sound and rationally appropriate knowledge. While model talk in the first place emphasized the epistemic and political tentativeness of models, Solow’s model turned into the epitome of what graduates called the “MIT style of modeling.”