This is excellent news from the Guardian this morning:
Economics undergraduates at theUniversity of Manchester have formed the Post-Crash Economics Society, which they hope will be copied by universities across the country. The organisers criticise university courses for doing little to explain why economists failed to warn about the global financial crisis and for having too heavy a focus on training students for City jobs.
A growing number of top economists, such as Ha-Joon Chang, who teaches economics at Cambridge University, are backing the students.
Next month the society plans to publish a manifesto proposing sweeping reforms to the University of Manchester's curriculum, with the hope that other institutions will follow suit.
Joe Earle, a spokesman for the Post-Crash Economics Society and a final-year undergraduate, said academic departments were "ignoring the crisis" and that, by neglecting global developments and critics of the free market such as Keynes and Marx, the study of economics was "in danger of losing its broader relevance".
I warmly support the students' move, simply because they are right.
The are not the first to realise: this movement began in France more than a decade ago, and the Real World Economic Review resulted. That does not change the fact that they are spot on in their criticisms. An obsession with mathematical economics is destroying the credibility of this branch of what should be moral philosophy and the more people that say so the better.
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I welcome this too, Richard. And wish them every success. But I hope they are prepared for the backlash. The advocates and supporters of neoliberal economics occupy many influential positions in academia in the UK – and across the globe, of course.
“criticise university courses for doing little to explain why economists failed to warn about the global financial crisis ”
They’ve just given the Nobel to Robert Shiller who did in fact forecast the US housing crash and the dotcom crash. That’s hardly economics ignoring the point now is it?
As ever, your evidence is wholly partial Tim
They gave it at the same time to Fama
Indeed Fama also won. And he has repeatedly stated that the strong version of the EMH is incorrect and also that the weak version is obviously true. Something which just about every economist agrees with him on. Including Shiller, obviously.
But that just proves both suffer hegemonic thinking
I (unsurprisingly) agree, as questions of economic policy are clearly normative as they involve should, and therefore need to be answered in light of issues of distributive justice.
However, I would add a caveat: moral/political philosophy can’t say anything about economic policy without some theory about the various likely economic effects of various policies. These questions require theories which should be empirically investigated. Unfortunately it isn’t clear that any economic theory does a particularly good job of predicting the consequences of policies, perhaps for legitimate and understandable reasons. I don’t think the heterodox approaches are offering hugely more than the mainstream approach in this regard.
So while I agree with the students that its important not to think that the free-market-inflected mainstream economic theory is the only game in town and can answer of the important questions on its own, its not like it should necessarily got rid of entirely.
I agree there is no good reason to get rid of this theory: it would be censorship to do so
But it is not the only game in town
And nor should its theory create policy rather then be used to test policy created for other reasons
I’ve just signed this http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/revise-the-university-of-manchesters-economic/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=system&utm_campaign=Send%2Bto%2BFriend
So have I
Have just signed -I grew up in Manchester and its radical traditions! Economics, like religion must relate to life and the real needs of people. Education must encourage outside the box thinking.
I have signed under several names and suggest others do the same!
Bring the economic policies of France to these shores now!
It’s time that the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle got more of an airing. Afterall, most people seem to recognise credit expansion and banking as being central to the crisis, so the Austrians deserve being listened to. I hope the Manchester students include this in their approach.
Listen by all means
And then any wise person dismisses it
At the risk of repeating myself, it is time the government created and spent into circulation its own money instead of borrowing, saving it tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions every year. Inflationary? No! It is likely less government spending will be required as the government will be no longer paying borrowers back. Any risk of inflation can be dealt with by simply taxing the money out of circulation.
Private banks can be very heavily regulated or they can we taken into public ownership, or there can be a national bank set up and the private banks can work in tandem with the state bank, but again, they should be strongly regulated.
I prefer the option of a nationalised banking system myself, but realise this will be unlikely to happen, more’s the pity!