Seduced And Abandoned: Obfuscation In Economics

Though transparency and clarity are essential to advance any discipline, progress in economics is too often stymied by the efforts of both readers and writers. Blockages form whether intentionally or not. Like clots in the bloodstream, communication blockages can then act to stall and divert economic understanding. Consequently, a failure to communicate clearly with one another can seep over when economists subsequently speak directly to the general public causing policy and programs to be built upon a false understanding of basic economics. This volume serves as a preliminary attempt to examine this issue by analyzing four methods that tend to block (or obfuscate) vital flows of communication.