As I opened my inbox last week to read about the economics department’s new requirements, I hoped against hope the department had taken the step toward relevance I have long felt it needed. Alas, the new requirements were nothing like the drastic changes the department needs.
The recent changes aren’t necessarily bad. They mostly involve adding a second statistics course, and I agree with Ron Michener, director of undergraduate studies for the department, that the addition was overdue.
The economics department needs to take a critical look at itself, however. Especially in the midst of an unforeseen economic crisis, it is clear neoclassical economics has not provided the answers to the world’s economic problems.
For those non-economics majors reading this column, I do not have the space here to explain adequately, but it will suffice to say that neoclassical economics is based on the assumption that humans are rational beings who maximize their “utility,” or the pleasure they get from different activities and things. This ideology often concludes that markets should be left free from government intervention. Lately, though, this sort of thinking has been thrown into serious doubt. Even The Economist — normally a bastion of neoclassicism — noted in its Feb. 7 issue that “Ideas about “rational” economic man are being overturned by new ones from a discipline called behavioural [sic] economics,” a field which seeks “to study how real people actually behave.”
Behavioral economics (spelled with a “u” in England, apparently) is just one of a number of new approaches to economics that are broadly called “heterodox” economics due to their tolerance of more than one viewpoint or the admittedly offensive term “post-autistic” economics, referring to neoclassical economics’ narrow, overly rational view of humanity. These approaches include Marxist, feminist, green, ecological and evolutionary economics.
None of these schools of thought are taught within the University’s undergraduate economics curriculum. In fact, when I asked Michener whether he felt alternatives to the neoclassical model were presented, he answered, “What alternatives would that be?”
Unfortunately, Michener is right that these schools of thought are generally considered outside the field of economics. But that’s only because economics faculties at this and other universities, indoctrinated into the neoclassical model, exclude other viewpoints from their departments. They see economics as an exact science with only one correct answer, instead of a liberal art in which many approaches are valid. When I spoke to Michener, he labeled Marxist economics as “alchemy” — an interesting statement at a time when Christopher Hitchens is writing in The Atlantic about Marx’s rediscovered relevance. It is fine for academics to disagree with alternative approaches, but it is inappropriate for them to shut valid viewpoints out of the field entirely.
In fact, in four years of economics courses I do not once recall a professor raising serious objections to neoclassical assumptions. Some professors do note arguments that could be raised to support government intervention in markets — two that I’ve had include Prof. John McLaren and Bill Shobe, Center for Economic and Policy Studies director — but even then, they stay within the traditional model.
For students actually majoring in economics, this ideological monotony is not as much of a problem. Intelligent and intellectually honest students who are interested in real-world problems will eventually notice that the assumptions of the neoclassical model often have to be dropped to deal with real issues. For many of my fellow fourth-year majors, it has become clear neoclassical economics has little to say about the real world.
There are two other groups of students whose exposure to only one ideology worries me more, however. The first is the financial conservatives who major in economics. Never being forced to question their views, they join the ranks of economists like CNBC’s Rick Santelli, whose on-air rant against “losers” who have lost their homes shows how little he understands about the behavior of actual people.
The second group harmed by this homogeneity is the non-economics majors whose only exposure to economics is ECON 201 (now 2010 — will Prof. Ken Elzinga have to change the license plate on his hot rod?). Elzinga is a beloved professor, but the curriculum of his introductory course has one take-away message: “Markets good, government bad.” How many students have graduated thinking that’s all there is to economics?
Adding a few courses in heterodox economics would be wonderful, but it would not solve the problem, since only interested students would take them. Even if they were required of majors, that would imply that professors teaching other courses are free to ignore alternative approaches.
The curricula of all economics courses should include alternative approaches. Courses like development economics and labor economics could stand to gain a lot from including additional viewpoints.
Economics majors could also be required to take courses in related fields — and I don’t mean math and statistics. Other liberal arts like politics, sociology and even literature address the same questions as economics and offer different answers.
Unfortunately, the economics faculty seems reluctant to make any change that would question its orthodoxy. Until this attitude improves, I have one piece of advice to first- and second-year students thinking about majoring in economics: Don’t.
Daniel Colbert’s column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at d.colbert@cavalierdaily.com.
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