Dear Penners and URPR's: I was impressed with the open letter to Greg Mankiw that a number of students in his ECON 10 course posted. In the letter they asserted that Mankiw privileges Adam Smith over John Maynard Keynes -
I would argue that Mankiw distorts SMith --- In his 1998 Principles textbook (don't have a recent edition in front of me) on p. 145 Mankiw discusses the "invisible hand" concept by running together Smith's discussion of the "self-interest" of the butcher, the baker and the grocer (from Book I of the Wealth of Nations with some words (not all) from the only reference to the invisible hand (from Book IV of TWON). In fact when read carefully in context, Smith's use of the invisible hand is to show that the NATURAL FORCES of the market lead businesses to PREFER domestic investment to foreign investment -- thus MERCANTILISM was UNNECESSARY --- but the goals (maximum domestic employment) was for Smith the most important cause of "The Wealth of Nations..." I referenced Mankiw's misbehavior briefly in my article (now on the PERI web site "A Neo-Liberal Distortion of Adam .mith: THe Case of the Invisible Hand" http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_51-100/WP79.pdf but it would be great if I could be directly in touch with students who are interested in starting a dialogue on the Harvard campus (and beyond) about the neoclassical biases (sometimes outright distortions) in "mainstream" economics courses. Please respond personally to me at [email protected] HOORAY FOR STUDENTS WHO REFUSE TO TAKE ECON PROFESSORS AS GOSPEL Mike
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