Today, much like yesterday, was fairly uneventful. The most interesting part of my day was working on my project for my class. Aside from our three homeworks, this is the only thing I have had to work on outside of class, and it has been by far the most interesting facet of the class. We could choose any topic to do our project on, and our group, Niels, Malachai, and I, chose the topic of austerity, seeing as it is quite relevant to what's going on in much of the world today. The project is basically considering the implementation of austerity in an economy experiencing recession, and whether or not that implementation is a good thing; whether it helps or hinders the economy. This is a hugely debated issue all throughout the Eurozone and even here in the U.S., although it seems to fall under a different guise.
The most interesting part of all the research I did today was seeing contrasting opinions. In many fields of science, when there is some complicated issue, there is clear evidence backing up both sides of the argument over said issue. But when it comes to economics, especially when austerity is concerned, a lot of the evidence is not so clear-cut and tends to blend together. Both sides use the same evidence to reach different conclusions, or come up with different reasons for the conclusions. It is then up to me to decide which reasons and conclusions seem sensible based on what I know, but it is really difficult, as both sides' conclusions do make sense for the most part. It is really interesting how this project is giving me insight into how foggy this whole process really is, and gives me a little more perspective on the challenges that economists really face.
No comments:
Post a Comment