History and Future of Economics
I’m going to post this link to a column by The New York Times‘ David Brooks – about the field of economics, so its points are not forgotten. It’s an important view of our discipline, and my colleague Ric Holt argues that he and several others have been making this point for many years now. Frankly, I have to mull it over. I’m inherently suspicious of pronouncements that say, “The King is dead. Long live the King!” They often set up the old “king” as full of faults, and welcome the new improved king. Holt et al use neoclassical economics as the label for the old king.
In any case Brooks is worth a read. Here are a couple of excerpts:
Some brilliant scholar has to write a comprehensive history of modern economics because the evolution of this field is clearly one of the most consequential things happening in the world today.
Act I in this history would be set in the era of economic scientism: the period when economists based their work on a crude vision of human nature (the perfectly rational, utility-maximizing autonomous individual) and then built elaborate models based on that creature.
Act II would occur over the past few decades, as a few brave economists tried to move beyond this stick-figure view of humanity. Herbert Simon pointed out that people aren’t perfectly rational. Gary Becker analyzed behaviors that don’t seem to be the product of narrow self-interest, like having children and behaving altruistically. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman pointed out that people seem to have common biases when they try to make objective decisions.
I teach principles of economics courses and a course in the economics of healthcare at Southern Oregon University.
