Jeremy Corbyn and the economics of the real world

Posted on

I have a blog under the above title on The Conversation website this morning. The piece was written last week, although minorly updated last night, and is my first comment as Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University on The Conversation site, which was reserved exclusively for academics.

I suggest quick visit to the site to read the whole thing, but my core argument is that economists are not an independent, exogenous variable in the process of measuring and commenting upon the economy but are instead an endogenous variable whose own impact on economic policy has to be appraised and measured by assessing the motivation for the questions they ask, the measures they propose and the way in which those measures are constructed and interpreted.

The result is that I argue that there is no such thing as an objective, observing economists: the very process of measurement and comment in which they engage has impact on the economy.

In that case I argue that economists have a duty, not least because many are publicly funded, to engage more explicitly in policy discussion with politicians, and that I hope Jeremy Corbyn will provide them with that opportunity. It would be good to see that happen.


Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:

You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.

And if you would like to support this blog you can, here: