Krugman and Mike Konczal Agree: Macro First Then Micro

     He agrees with Konczal that it'd be much better if students were taught macro first-in undergraduate school it's the opposite. However, as they both point out, Paul Samuelson in his truly definitive 1948 textbook 'Economics' did it the other way around. 

     http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/02/doing-macro-first/?_r=0

     For Sameulson's great tome click here. 

     http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Original-1948-Paul-Samuelson/dp/0070747415/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1386120024&sr=1-1&keywords=paul+samuelson

     Krugman, nevertheless is pessimistic that we could ever wholly recreate Samuelson's golden age. 

     "But there are some serious problems with Konczal’s vision — ways in which what Samuelson did in 1948 can’t be replicated now."

     "What Samuelson brought was actually a double dose of innovation to economics — Keynesian macro plus a new orientation toward mathematical models. At the time these went hand in hand, and were mutually reinforcing: the apparent success of Keynesian macro, which was model-oriented, vanquished the institutionalists. Today, the economists most deeply committed to viewing the world through a haze of equations also tend to be deeply hostile to any kind of macro that can make sense of the recent crisis."

     "Also, back then Keynes was new and innovative. Today, you have generations of economists brought up in the belief that it’s wrong — they don’t know what’s in it, actually, but that’s what they were taught."

     So there was a time in which macro came first and micro second.  Konczal's proposal is interesting. It seems that one way or the other the imbalance in favor of micro needs to be redressed if there is ever to be an improvement in how macro is taught-other suggestions are from Skidelsky and Steven Keen that macro and micro actually be split up and taught as different degrees where taking them together is even somewhat discouraged. 

    I would point out that Krugman's clear advocacy of macro over micro fits a little awkwardly for his rejection of Stephen Williamson's new model which shows QE is deflationary on the basis that it has no microfoundations. 

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/12/stephen-williamson-deflationary-qe-and.html

     If you believe that macro should be primary why must every utterance that is made about macro be justified on a micro basis-the reverse is not practiced anywhere?

     P.S. One irony is that many post Keynesians now want to put all the modeling on the backburner somewhat-not do away with it but feel it's now overdone. Yet initially Keynesianism really inaugurated the extensive use of models against instiutionalists.