The list has see considerable discussion of the nature of economics
recently. I haven’t been able to participate because I’ve been busy on other
things, though I’ve tried to read some of the material.
The problem in at least some of the postings is a failure to distinguish
between economics as something that is taught in the classroom and economics
as one must use it as a practitioner. In the classroom, economists are taught
macro and micro economics. They encounter economic thinkers of the past – the
physiocrats, the classicists, Marx, neoclassicists, Keynesians. They encounter
self-interest, rational choice, and welfare theory. Some of this is presented
algebraically, some geometrically, and some as words. All of this is well and
good because it makes young minds work. The intent, as I understood it when a
student, is not to learn about the real world, but to learn how economists
imagined the world, and still imagine it.
When one gets out of the classroom, and even before, one encounters the
real world, where real issues must be resolved with real answers. As an
economist in the Canadian public service, I was never able to satisfy my
superiors by drawing indifference curves or citing the iron law of wages. What
they demanded of me was short, snappy and well reasoned answers, something
they could use to move a particular issue forward. Undoubtedly, what I had
learned in the classroom helped because it had sharpened my ability to think
rationally and provide helpful, if not necessarily correct, responses. That,
in my opinion, was the real value of what I had been exposed to as a student.
I still don’t know if what my professors taught me was right, wrong or
relevant. All I know is that it helped to make me a useful thinker.
Real world issues don’t often come in a way that make the tools of
economics directly applicable. Mostly they come as very difficult questions.
For example, why has Argentina had to repudiate its debt and why is it now in
a deep recession? Classroom economics can provide some insights into this, but
if I really had to provide an answer, I would consult someone with several
years of experience in international finance and monetary policy – someone who
knew the turf, so to speak. I would also search out people who knew about the
history and culture of Argentina, because I suspect that what has happened
there is far larger than something that economists or monetary experts can
deal with.
One aspect of globalization and mass communication is that issues now come
thick and fast and from all over the place. Rather than discreet and separable
events, they pound in on us as a babble of noise. Here again the specific
content of the individual bits and pieces learned in the classroom may be of
little use. Drawing indifference curves would not be very helpful and one
probably wouldn’t have time to draw them anyhow. Yet I would maintain that the
fact that one had to use those bits and pieces as tools to try to sort things
out in the imaginary world of the classroom was helpful. It helped one to
learn how to pick apart the various strands of the noise and to rank or
sequence them in ways important to finding real world solutions.
So, to end this, I would suggest that we not get too hung up on the
"nature" of something like economics as a received body of thought or theory.
Certainly, one should not hesitate to question its premises. But to me the
important question is whether what one learned in academe has helped one to
think and solve problems. Even though I have not drawn a single indifference
curve since leaving the classroom, I would answer this in the affirmative.
Ed Weick
