Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2008
My essay “Let's Take the Con out of Econometrics” is intended to be an amusing, titillating, and even annoying distillation of ideas that I have published in a more formal, academic style in many different locations over the course of several years. As far as I could tell, these ideas were widely ignored until I adopted the more contentious style of “Con,” which, since its publication two years ago, has been reprinted in two volumes and excerpted in two others. There is something to be learned from this episode about the sociology of ideas. Notoriety, however, is a mixed blessing, since now I find myself spending too much of my time trying to explain what I meant.