Tag Archives: teaching economics

It is Wednesday and so just some snippets. I have written about the behavioural impacts that studying mainstream economics, particularly the microeconomics component can have on students as they progress through their studies. I have observed sort of nice young people entering first-year and by later years, become arrogant, self-opinionated and delusional jerks. This phenomenon is particularly prominent if they go onto to do postgraduate level studies. It is well documented. The way...

Not MMT, but you may find this of interest. In the context of the radical Macroeconomics Course I am teaching, I was very unhappy with the material available which tries to explain what Keynes is saying. In attempting to explain it better, I constructed an extremely simple model of a primitive agricultural economy. This model has a lot of pedagogical value in that it can demonstrate many complex phenomenon in very simple terms. In particular, Keynesian, Marxists, Classical and...

Recommended reading on the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of economics, and Milton Friedman's instrumentalism.EvonomicsEconomists Should Stop Defending Milton Friedman’s Pseudo-science George H. Blackford | former Chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan-Flint

Econ 101. The standard model is misleading. Having gone through a handful of the most frequently used textbooks of economics at the undergraduate level today, I can only conclude that the models that are presented in these modern mainstream textbooks try to describe and analyze complex and heterogeneous real economies with a single rational-expectations-robot-imitation-representative-agent. That is, with something that has absolutely nothing to do with reality.….For almost forty years...

My paper is a survey of the huge amount of solid empirical evidence against the utility maximization hypothesis that is at the core of all microeconomics currently being taught today in Economics textbooks at universities all over the world. It is obviously important, because if what it says is true, the entire field of microeconomics needs to be re-constructed from scratch. Nonetheless, it was summarily rejected by a large number of top journals, before being eventually published by Jack...

The economists' dilemma: If economic methodology doesn't base itself on assumptions common to the hard sciences, like homogeneity, additivity, transitivity, etc, then it won't be considered a real science. On the other hand, if economists ignore reflexivity, downward causation in systems, synergy, and other factors that affect individuals who are socially embedded, its output will not fit reality and it will appear lack empirical foundation, not to mention disappointing raised expectations...

Samuel Bowles and Wendy Carlin.I would say that CORE is an update rather than a new version.Lars P. Syll’s BlogA new paradigm for teaching economicsLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

I’m not saying all economists can’t answer these questions. I’m saying that collectively these are core parts of what the discipline of economics should be about and yet are topics dealt with by fringe groups whose key insights have not penetrated the textbooks or been shared widely across the discipline.... Fresh Economic ThinkingSeven questions economists can't answerCameron K. Murray

I’ve finally committed to delivering a manuscript of my long-overdue book Economics in Two Lessons. As part of the process, I’m going to post the chapters, one at a time, and ask for comments, criticism, encouragement and so on. To begin at the beginning, here’s the Introduction. Crooked TimberEconomics in Two LessonsJohn Quiggin | Professor and an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow at the University of Queensland, and a member of the Board of the Climate Change Authority of the...

Just about any one of them is fatal.Fresh Economic Thinking Decent criticisms of economics? Here are 111 of them. Cameron K. Murray