The Publish-Crash Economics Society at Manchester University. Photograph: Jon Super for the Guardian
The Association for Heterodox Economics welcomes pupil initiatives for fundamental reform of the economics curriculum, as do our post-Keynesian colleagues (Letters, 19 November). Heterodox economists, drawing on a assortment of theorists, such as Keynes, Marx, Minsky and other individuals, have regularly argued for greater pluralism in the two economics curricula and economics analysis evaluation. We recognise the clear positive aspects of pluralism in economics: it encourages, by exposing them to option perspectives, the growth of students’ vital contemplating and judgment. Also, by drawing on a variety of views, pluralism provides greater energy to clarify genuine-planet events and provides the equipment to solve real-globe complicated troubles.
We assistance initiatives from inside of economics for curriculum reform (Report, 12 November). The proposed reform incorporates considerably of what we regard as desirable for the potential of the subject: an appreciation of the complexity of the globe, the value of financial background and the historical past of financial considered, a recognition of the relevance of environmental limits to economic activity, and a broader base of financial concepts than is taught presently. Even so, we are also concerned that this new initiative is also narrow, advocates evidence without having the theoretical frameworks to recognize it, and may basically substitute one particular orthodoxy with an additional.
The Manchester students’ proposals (Report, 25 October) are the newest in a prolonged line of appeals by student bodies for a much more pluralist and pertinent curriculum, following actions by students at Harvard, Cambridge and Paris. In the early 1970s an lively protest by students at the University of Sydney led to the reform of the university curriculum, to contain “political economy”, ie economics that requires into account, energy, politics and a contest of concepts. What all of these pupil protests share is the demand for economics that illuminates the real globe, requires in a number of perspectives and engages them. Additionally, as the current protests have proven, students recognise the value of it to them. Fortunately, even inside of the monoculture of the United kingdom economics curriculum, there are institutions in which pluralist, sensible, pertinent economics is taught.
Prof Victoria Chick University College London, Prof Bruce Cronin University of Greenwich, Prof Alan Freeman London Metropolitan University, Dr Andrew Mearman University of the West of England, Dr Jamie Morgan Leeds Metropolitan University, Dr Ioana Negru Anglia Ruskin University, Dr Wendy Olsen University of Manchester, Dr Bruce Philp Nottingham Trent University, Prof Molly Scott Cato Roehampton University, Dr Pritam Singh Oxford Brookes University
• Seumas Milne is appropriate to recommend that traditional financial concept has totally failed (Comment, 21 November). The nation is supposedly now in economic recovery at a time when personalized debt amongst the poorest is at record levels, meals banks are commonplace and hospitals are reporting a fourfold enhance in malnutrition situations. If economic recovery just signifies the rich are making even more funds at the cost of the poor then this definition of a healthier economic climate need to be rejected out of hand. Genuine recovery will only take place when the whole nation can comfortably consume and shell out their fuel bills. It is a pity that the Labour celebration fails to recognise this simple equation as a lot as the coalition parties.
Tim Matthews
Luton, Bedfordshire
• It is undoubtedly very good news that economics students are creating moves to finish the stranglehold of the neoliberals in universities, but we cannot wait for a generational change just before ending the equivalent stranglehold of neoliberals in the British government (notably, but by no means only, in the Treasury) and in Brussels also.
It is clear that empirical evidence will not persuade them to abandon an edifice that, as Milne factors out, is created on such shaky ground that whatever fancy maths it entails, it is fundamentally worthless. So how to dislodge them? Political stress appears like the only answer. Possibly now we can see moves from the Labour party to firmly disown this pernicious thesis that has been proved in excess of decades to generate nothing at all but economic misery? If not, these of us who want to see genuine alter at the next election have small option but to search elsewhere. Could strain aid the Greens to finally make a breakthrough? Or is it too late to start a broad mass movement for political adjust that could have a real affect at the subsequent election?
Susan Curran
Norwich
• A precursor to the financial crisis post-2008 was the collapse of the hedge firm LTCM 10 years earlier in September 1998. On the company’s board have been Myron Scholes and Robert Merton who had won the Nobel prize for economics in 1997 on the valuation of derivatives. This was an egregious instance of the prestige of the Nobel prize being accorded to economic orthodoxy, therefore including to the dominance of neoclassical economics in academia. Provided its robust ideological basis, the Nobel prize – which even the Americans crave – ought not be awarded to economics (very rightly deemed as “the dismal science”). Hence, as element of their campaign towards orthodoxy, dissenters ought to make representations to the Nobel committee to eliminate the prize for economics.
Dr Rumy Hasan
University of Sussex
• Milne rightly observes that “some mainstream academics realise that they may possibly have to compromise, and have been colonising a Soros-funded project to overhaul the curriculum, hoping to restrict the scale of modify”. In this connection, it could be noted that, not like individuals of us with radical views, people undertaking this Soros-funded “flanking manoeuvre” do not encounter pressure to adopt a stance of getting “unbiased”. Their document drafting a new “core venture” begins with an unashamedly partisan “Introduction to economics”, whose opening section is entitled The Capitalist Revolution. This proposed new opening section to the 1st chapter of the “core” retails all the outdated fairy-stories about how wonderfully – and apparently peacefully! – capitalism established the eternal principles of human nature: competition, initiative etc. I wonder how lengthy it will be prior to Gove can make this curriculum compulsory.
Dr Hugh Goodacre
University School London
Letters: We need economic theories fit for the real world
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