Real-World Economics Review

from James Galbraith What is to take the place of neoclassical economics and its neoliberal policy offshoot? There is no shortage of candidates, grouped under the broad banner of economic heterodoxy. Some of these successor doctrines – behavioral economics and complexity economics are examples of note – take the neoclassical orthodoxies as a point of departure. They therefore continue to define themselves in relation to those orthodoxies. Others avoided the gravitational pull altogether –...

from Dean Baker With the economy facing substantial bottlenecks, and the continuing spread of the pandemic, it is worth taking a quick look at how lower paid workers have been faring. Nominal wages have been rising rapidly for workers at the bottom of the pay ladder in recent months. This has allowed workers in the lowest paying jobs to see substantial increases in real wages, in spite of the uptick in inflation the last few months. Here’s the picture in retail for production and...

from Richard Norgaard Economism has been modern capitalism’s myth system, or in computer parlance, capitalism’s operating system. It has stressed utilitarian moral beliefs compatible with economic assumptions that are critical to neoclassical economic theories. These beliefs include the idea that society is simply the sum of its individuals and their desires, that people can be perfectly, or at least sufficiently, informed to act rationally in markets, that markets balance individual...

from Clive Spash and Adrien Guisan    Economics has become increasingly detached from its object of study and the orthodoxy is fundamentally flawed as a social science because it advocates a prescriptive methodology while lacking any serious engagement with epistemology and ontology.  The resulting epistemic fallacy means it promotes a narrow implicit world view as if a factual truth.  Failures here include imposition of limited quantitative methods and mathematically formalist...

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from Jamie Morgan and current issue of RWER If climate emergency indicates anything, it is that we are urgently in need of an economics that is “fit for purpose”. Consider what “fit for purpose” now means. An adequate economics now has to be one that helps us understand the difficult decisions that are likely to confront us in the coming years. On a global scale we are going to have to leave fossil fuels in the ground, restore aquifers and water systems, reinvigorate ecosystems, greatly...

from Lars Syll To be ‘analytical’ and ‘logical’ is something most people find recommendable. These words have a positive connotation. Scientists think deeper than most other people because they use ‘logical’ and ‘analytical’ methods. In dictionaries, logic is often defined as “reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity” and ‘analysis’ as having to do with “breaking something down.” But that’s not the whole picture. As used in science, analysis usually means...

from Lukas Bäuerle and current issue of RWER Pressing arguments for a paradigm shift in economics – based on an assessment of mainstream economics and its shortcomings – are out there for quite a while now. The emperor has been declared long dead in intellectual terms (Keen, 2001), but it is still firmly alive institutionally. This is the only reason why we still have to talk about it at all. Having said this, it goes without saying that the “intellectual monoculture” (Graupe, 2015) in...

from John Komlos and current issue of RWER We are at the cusp of a new era. The 21st century did not begin in earnest until 2008, signifying a seismic break with the past in ways far too numerous to mention. To be sure, the Dot-Com bubble could have served as a lesson for the vulnerability of Wall Street and that it desperately needed vigilant oversight, but the economy emerged from that short recession relatively unscathed, and the warning sign was misunderstood. Sure, myriad of astute...

Dean baker joins Thom Hartmann in this very exclusive interview! This interview is from Thom's Thursday 8.5 show! Never miss The Thom Hartmann Program! The Thom Hartmann Program is live every week day from 12:00pm - 3:00pm eastern on PoliticalVoicesNetwork.com!