Carrol Cox wrote: > A profession lives by those it recruits into its ranks from undergraduates. > What about economics as now taught would attract radical students to join the > profession? If those attracted to it are overwhelmingly conservative, it > doesn't take any particular direct pressure on economists to elicit > conservative results.< [typos corrected]
It's a process that continues over time, with mutually-reinforcing forces: it involves both "selection" (attracting pro-market types) and indoctrination (so that those who take economics classes are more likely to "fink" in prisoner's dilemma games, indicating narrow individualism). The pro-market ideology's reproduction tends to take on a life of its own... However, this autonomous process is only relatively autonomous. The nature of the economics profession changes over time partly due to events external to it. The Great Depression shook up the club, so that the "young Turks" could rise to the top, bringing in Keynesianism of a sort. (It also helped that the profession expanded a lot after WW2, as large numbers of new universities were established.) The current Great Melt-Down may have a similar effect (though likely without the parenthetical part, since universities may be shrinking or staying the same size). (One thing that may prevent a transformation of the profession is that established types are suddenly singing a Keynesian tune (cf. Martin Feldstein!) so there's not as much as a "young Turk" phenomenon, which would be more jarring.) Where do radicals come from in the profession? from the outside. The rise of URPE (or CSE in England) came because of the Vietnam war protests and related social protest movements. It's not that radicals are attracted to economics as much as that people who are attracted to economics are more likely to be radicals. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
