[crewtide]

"Some economists argue that mass privatisation would have worked if it had been implemented even more rapidly and extensively." This is always the argument about any failed policy. These researchers should do a wider study that includes privatization efforts before 1990.

We could conduct some pretty sweet experiments in virtual worlds. Would libertarianism really work if it were the law? A real welfare state? Privatization of a communist country? Start a virtual world with those laws and see what happens. Some obvious drawbacks include: - self-selection of participants (you could get around this by controlling who is allowed to participate) - lower motivation (being unable to pay your actual rent has a pretty different effect from having a low virtual bank account balance) - natural anonymity of avatars (there are plenty of things people do online they'd never do in real life)

But a well-done research study could probably account for a lot of those things.

Maybe the IMF should conduct some virtual world experiments before shoving their current pet policy down the throats of millions of people whose government just collapsed. This isn't the first complaint I've heard that goes, "The policy forced on X country by the IMF turns out to have ruined everything. Oops."

[praxeologist]

This is impossible. In fact, the whole pursuit of mathematical economics and economic modelling is flawed. Se here for a fuller explanation: http://mises.org/daily/3638