Saturday, October 11, 2014

Chris Parr — ‘New’ approach to economics courses criticized

The course, entitled “The Economy”, has been produced by the CORE Project (Curriculum Open access Resources in Economics), a group of more than 20 leading economists.…

However, Ben Glover, campaigns coordinator and chair of the Post-Crash Economics Society at the University of Manchester, which has conducted a high-profile campaign to change the economics curriculum at the institution, said that the new course “isn’t really much of a change”.
 
“The issues CORE sets out to address aren’t the real gaps in economics,” he said. “We see the real hole in economic thinking being the neglect of alternative economic perspectives. This is why we continually call for pluralism in schools of thought. 
Nowhere does CORE make this clear to its students and why in its current conception it fails.”
My conclusion, too, after looking at the CORE "reform." Mostly rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Times Higher Education UK
‘New’ approach to economics courses criticized
Chris Parr
(h/t Jan Milch)

5 comments:

Roger Erickson said...

We need a commons sense approach to policy. That's not new, nor does it require "economics."

We'd be better off without economists getting anywhere near policy offices?
(Let 'em write books AFTER the fact. We got some leadership to use, while exploring emerging options.)

Can we take a poll?

Tom Hickey said...

I'd say it's more a question of which economists. As long as politicians are neoliberals, they will select neoliberal advisor that rationalize neoliberal policy.

It's the politicians that need to be changed, not the economists. Anyway, economists don't have all that much power, even when they are close to the center of power. Obama listens to his political advisers instead of his economic advisers. Christina Romer got it right about the needed stimulus, but the political people advised Obama differently.

Roger Erickson said...

Yes, Tom,
But that's only because the political advisors hired (or listened to) their own flavor of orthodox economic apologists beforehand.

Given unpredictable challenges, we rely upon adaptive rate, spearheaded by adaptive leadership.

Economics, accounting & risk-mgt all belong a few levels back, in supply-chain mgt. None belong IN leadership zones at the outer edge of policy formation.

There, we're always required to TEST multiple responses to ongoing demands, and to make early decisions based on insufficient data.

So you can't LEAD with risk management. Only with adaptive selection.

Tom Hickey said...

Those political advisers were looking at the polls, which are reflections of public opinion shaped by the propaganda machine and interest politics. So far, no one has been able to cut through this veil. Politicians don't try, even if they know better.

Roger Erickson said...

Exactly. Most politicians rely only on what electorates demand. Hoping for genius, moral leaders is a long wait for a train that don't come often enough.

Voters always have to demand the change they want, by expressing their feedback, listening to it, and having it too.

No practice, no Desired Outcomes.