archive

The debate about rethinking economics

Marion Fourcade (UC-Berkeley): Economics: The View from Below. Rune Moller Stahl (Copenhagen): Economic Theory, Politics and the State in the Neoliberal Epoch. Erik Angner (Stockholm): We’re All Behavioral Economists Now. What do we actually know about the economy? Macroeconomics is better than you think, microeconomics worse, and data are limited. Eric Posner and Glen Weyl on how economists became so timid: The field used to be visionary — now it’s just dull. John F. Tomer reviews Delusions of Economics and the Way Forward by Gerald Cory. Economists focus too little on what people really care about. Simon Johnson on saving capitalism from Economics 101.

Erwin Dekker and Blaz Remic (EUR): Two Types of Ecological Rationality: Or How to Best Combine Psychology and Economics. John B. Davis (Marquette): Ethics and Economics: A Complex Systems Approach. Sharun Mukand (Warwick) and Dani Rodrik (Harvard): The Political Economy of Ideas: On Ideas Versus Interests in Policymaking. Rights and wrongs of economic modelling: Uskali Maki reviews Economics Rules by Dani Rodrik. Noah Smith on how econ went from philosophy to science. Yes, government creates wealth: Mariana Mazzucato on how economics has never accepted the idea that the public sector creates wealth, but it does — and acknowledging that can lead to sweeping change.

Roland Benabou (Princeton), Armin Falk (Bonn), and Jean Tirole (Toulouse): Narratives, Imperatives, and Moral Reasoning. Patrizio Laina (Helsinki): Meta-theory as a Uniting Framework for Economics and Global Political Economy. Tiago Mata (UCL): Reading Popular Histories of Economics: A Contemporary Historiography of Economics. From Prospect, rip it up and start again: Howard Reed on the case for a new economics; Diane Coyle writes in defence of the economists: Our field is not perfect, but the idea that it is so tainted we must “rip it up and start again” isn’t just pessimistic — it is based on inaccuracies; and top economists on what their subject needs to learn next.

Can economists and humanists ever be friends? Why economics is having a replication crisis. Econ majors graduate with a huge knowledge gap. Did economics fail? The debate about rethinking economics keeps rambling.