From The Atlantic, Bradley Bateman on the evangelical roots of American economics. Economists of the world, unite: Bernard A. Weisberger and Marshall I. Steinbaum on the American Economic Association’s little-known radical past — and its relevance in this post-Piketty moment (and more). E. Roy Weintraub (Duke): McCarthyism and the Mathematization of Economics. Lance Taylor (New School): Veiled Repression: Mainstream Economics, Capital Theory, and the Distributions of Income and Wealth. The new astrology: By fetishising mathematical models, economists turned economics into a highly paid pseudoscience. A far from dismal outcome: Microeconomists’ claims to be doing real science turn out to be true. Why economists should be more humble, even when they have great ideas: Henry Farrell interviews Dani Rodrik, author of Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science.
Catherine Lawson (Missouri Western): The “Textbook Controversy”: Lessons for Contemporary Economics. Noah Smith on how most of what you learned in Econ 101 is wrong. Wendy Carlin on changing how economics is taught. Dan Kopf on Russ Roberts and the quest to make economics interesting. Why are economists so small-minded? Jefferson Cowie investigates. Women, overshadowed: Study of economics papers finds that female authors get less credit than their male colleagues. Dean Baker on the year of the angry economists. Gerald Friedman on why liberal economists dish out despair. Are economics degrees fit for purpose? As the tech industry gets ever more data-driven, a “Ph.D. in economics” is more often becoming a job requirement in the sector.
