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Is economics ultimately a collection of just-so stories? Do we like the paradox of thrift because it is consistent with solidarity politics?

I think economics, done properly (rare, I know), lends itself more to our way of thinking than is commonly thought because of what passes for economics on television.

What it should be is a combination of sociology, political science, logic, and statistics.  What it winds up being in too many cases is mathematics' retarded brother.

Simon Johnson's blog had a post up on this the other day that made a point I've -- clumsily -- tried to make in the past, noting differences in opinion between PhD economists and undergraduates (the former being quite a bit more liberal than the latter): Studying economics as an undergraduate tends to correlate with becoming a Republican, but going on to a PhD tends to swing the person back to the left.

A little bit of economics can be a dangerous thing.

You have to get fairly deep into the subject, or you wind up believing crazy shit because your Macro 101 textbook had a pretty graph and your professor was more interested in writing papers than teaching properly.  You get people believing that RATEX is actually true rather than simply a tool for isolating other variables, which leads to all kinds of other absurdities.

Part of it is a time problem, I think.  It's difficult to fit the basic concepts of the different areas into a semester, let alone really dig into information asymmetries, price and wage adjustment, etc.  At best they'll tend to be covered to some extent in the intermediate-level classes.  And I'd guess most students aren't really interested in diving that deep into the field.  They just want the degree.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

by Drew J Jones (pedobear@pennstatefootball.com) on Wed Jun 9th, 2010 at 06:56:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Drew J Jones:

A little bit of economics can be a dangerous thing.

You have to get fairly deep into the subject, or you wind up believing crazy shit because your Macro 101 textbook had a pretty graph and your professor was more interested in writing papers than teaching properly.  You get people believing that RATEX is actually true rather than simply a tool for isolating other variables, which leads to all kinds of other absurdities.

Maybe it's time to rewrite first-year economics textbooks.

If you only take a first-year physics course you may end up believing in a clockwork universe, but at least planets and billiard balls and boxes on slopes will behave as advertised in your textbook... And any misconceptions you may take away don't have toxic sociopolitical consequences.

By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jun 9th, 2010 at 08:32:24 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I suspect the textbook market is too fractured and polluted by competing views on teaching and political agendas for that to do much good.  Everybody writes textbooks these days, because that's where the money is, and obviously professors are going to want their students to buy their textbooks.

I'm sure it's always been that way to some extent, but it used to be that Samuelson's textbook was quite common.

Although Krugman's intro texts are gaining some steam, as I understand it.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

by Drew J Jones (pedobear@pennstatefootball.com) on Wed Jun 9th, 2010 at 08:40:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]
If you want to change economics you do what the neo-libs did - find promising students, pay their way through college, give them privileged access to movers and shakers, and guide them until they're installed as the next generation of professors.

This is rather more expensive than producing a textbook, but it would be very much more effective.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed Jun 9th, 2010 at 08:51:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I am under the impression that the portions of the macro economics that are thought to future MBAs are there to install the ideologically correct view of the world. "Greed is good, thus the company I work for does right in being greedy."

Bureaucrats work better if the believe in their organizations cause, and multi-nationals are no exception.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Thu Jun 10th, 2010 at 07:57:21 AM EST
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